Recently Disney announced they’d be making a National Treasure series to continue the franchise. Goal is to make Disney+ more diverse, focusing a little less on Star Wars & Marvel, but other Disney properties people remember also.

Another example would be Disney bringing in Tim Allen to do a Santa Clause series on Disney+.

For National Treasure, the interesting thing isn’t the return itself, but why it took 15 years since the 2007 sequel to get approved.

National Treasure 1 made 347 million at the box office.
Budget was 100 million.

National Treasure 2 made 459 million.
Budget of 130 million.

Which for a major Disney movie wouldn’t be considered a huge return, mainly due to ticket splits and marketing costs, but the movie managed to succeed as a DVD, where the franchise had 111 million in sales for home video.

The movies clearly made money, so why didn’t they continue?

Came up with three reasons and number one is Nicolas Cage.

Nic Cage is a pretty amusing actor, where it was reported he was paid 20 million dollars for National Treasure and that was his standard salary in the 2000s.

The issue though was as his career kept going, the box office kept shrinking.

In 2007, when National Treasure 2 came out, it was one of four films he had that year.

Next, which failed horribly making only 76 million on a budget of 78 million, which means the movie likely lost over 35 million.

Grindhouse, which cost 67 million dollars and made 25 million, where the loss was insane.

The other was the first Ghost Rider movie, which made 220 million on a budget of 110 million, which wasn’t a huge win either.

National Treasure was by far the most successful movie he had that year and as his career developed, it only got worse from there.

Probably the biggest example being his next film with Disney, which was Sorcerer’s Apprentice, that made only 215 million on a budget of 150 million, showing it as a failed franchise attempt by Disney.

Disney didn’t have much faith in Cage and he kept taking larger payout roles, that failed quickly.

Reason two, National Treasure wasn’t big for Disney standards.

Did a quick look at the 2007 list of Disney movies and while National Treasure 2 was actually a low performer for Disney that year.

The Game Plan with Dwayne Johnson was a cash cow, making 146 million on a budget of 122 million.
Bridge to Terabitha made heavy profits also, producing 137 million on a budget of 17 million.
Ratouillie was another Pixar hit, making 623 million.
Enchanted made 340 million on a budget of 80 million, for a better margin.
Pirates of the Caribbean 3 also made 900 million on a budget of 300m.

The only Disney movie I could find that visibly did worse was their animated film, Meet the Robinson’s, which was a box office failure.

National Treasure 2 clearly made a profit, but it’s easy to see how it’d be sidelined, when that year had bigger blockbusters and also lower budget profit kings taking up the stage.

Reason three, the official reason, merchandise.

The team behind National Treasure said the official reason Disney didn’t act on a National Treasure 3 was they didn’t see merchandise potential.

Which on surface, it makes sense.

• There was no halloween costume.
• There was no ride at Disney land.
• There was very limited things they can sell from it.

Which merchandise is Disney’s biggest thing, where 54 million in Disney licensed merchandise was sold in 2017 and the company expects it to reach over 100 million before the end of this decade.

National Treasure didn’t on surface fit that model, not having cute characters, toys or anything to sell and it lost priority that way.

Personally, I think they were just not being creative, with some fast merchandise ideas.

1. National Treasure branded history book series for kids.
2. A National Treasure inspired escape room at Disney.
3. A lot of board games.

Obviously a little harder over plush, but felt there was unique merchandise for Disney with this.

Final thoughts

Ultimately, I think what really ended National Treasure 3 was the performance of Sorcerer’s Apprentice, which was the franchises lead actor doing another Disney movie and costing the company money.

That being said though, I feel as a Disney+ series, this could be a big winner, where I unsubscribed from Disney+, just due to me feeling it only had content for Star Wars/Marvel fans and not much else. This could be something that might hook in a lot more adults who enjoyed the original movies.