Nicolas Cage’s ‘National Treasure’ Franchise Is Set To Become A Disney+ Series (Without Nicolas Cage)

Nicolas Cage has multiple television shows in development, including one where he plays Joe Exotic and another where he voices an alcoholic, TV-obsessed dragon, but unfortunately he will not be in the National Treasure show. That’s the bad news. The good news is that National Treasure, the only good movie, is being turned into a show.

Disney is adapting the endlessly-rewatchable 2004 adventure film into a 10-episode series on Disney+. It will be overseen by producer Jerry Bruckheimer and original writers Marianne and Cormac Wibberley and explore “the timely issues of identity, community, historical authorship and patriotism, told from the point of view of Jess Morales, a twenty-year-old DREAMer who, with her diverse group of friends, sets off on the adventure of a lifetime to uncover her mysterious family history and recover lost treasure.” Mira Nair (The Namesake, Monsoon Wedding) is attached as director. That’s a surprisingly hefty premise for a TV show based on a movie where Nicolas Cage is a historian and amateur cryptologist named Benjamin Franklin Gates, but as long as there’s at least one scene where a character uses lemon juice to decipher a clue, I’m in.

As for National Treasure 3, it was being written as of last year. Cage has, I imagine, spent most of the pandemic pitching all the things Benjamin Franklin Gates can steal (including someone’s Disney+ account password so he can watch the show).