If you’re like me, you kind of adored the National Treasure films. They may not be cinematic gems, but they were damn fun adventure films, and in my opinion, did The Da Vinci Code much better than even The Da Vinci Code did. Both movies managed to do the perfect job of letting me escape the woes of high school life.

What’s more is that these movies made pretty solid bank too — especially by mid-2000s standards, with the first one making $347 million worldwide and the second one making $457 million worldwide. Given their $100 million-budgets, the margins weren’t superhero good, but they were solid nonetheless. A sequel would all but be guaranteed to make money…so why hasn’t Disney greenlit another film?

Speaking with Collider while promoting his upcoming shark film The Meg, National Treasure 1 and 2 director Jon Turtletaub gave us some insight.

“When National Treasure first got made, there was a lot more money to go around. Everybody got paid nicely. The problem with getting the third one made isn’t the people who are getting paid saying, ‘I’m not doing it unless you pay me a lot!’ It’s really that Disney feels they have other films they want to make that they think will make them more money. I think they’re wrong. I think they’re right about the movies they’re making; they’re obviously doing a really good job at making great films. I just think this would be one of them, and they don’t quite realize how much the Internet is begging for a third National Treasure.”

In simpler terms, Disney would much rather divert their resources to projects that are guaranteed to make a lot more money than a project like National Treasure, which they think will only bring them moderate profit margins. I have to agree with Turtletaub here though. I think audiences would eat up another film — I know I would. But do they even have a workable script?

Turtletaub went on, saying:

“The script was close, but not so great that the studio couldn’t say yes. But it’s been good enough that the studio could have said, ‘Yes, keep going. Get closer.’ [Producer] Jerry Bruckheimer is the master of taking something that’s good enough and turning it into something great in about an hour and a half. It’s a little nerve-wracking but it works.”

Dammit, Disney, keep it going! Maybe with Fox coming into the fold, they can push it over there so they can utilize some of their resources? I’d be up for that.

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SOURCE: Collider