In the recent report that Sony is developing Bad Boys 4, THR buried another vital piece of movie industry news so deep that not even Nicolas Cage's crack treasure hunter Benjamin Franklin Gates could unearth it. According to the story, Bad Boys for Life ci-writer Chris Bremner has also been tapped to write National Treasure 3 with Jerry Bruckheimer back on board as a producer. That's genuinely exciting news, since the last update we got on a third National Treasure movie basically amounted to an extremely exasperated "who knows?"

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Image via Buena Vista Pictures

Directed by Jon Turteltaub, 2004's National Treasure starred Cage as a historian who discovers a lead to a vast treasure hidden on the back of the Declaration of Independence. The film is also, inarguably, an absolute freaking blast, like Raiders of the Lost Ark if Harrison Ford was neither athletic or ever in a stable frame of mind. An equally entertaining sequel, National Treasure: Book of Secrets, followed in 2007. Whispers of a third movie have persisted ever since, but mostly in the form of that classic Hollywood "never say never" development hell.

When we spoke to Turtletaub in 2018, he explained the lack of forward momentum on National Treasure 3 as "Disney feels they have other films they want to make that they think will make them more money."

This is the first we've heard of Bremner being attached to the project, but there has apparently been some form of a script floating around. Here's what Turtletaub told us two years ago:

“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.”

For more on National Treasure 3, here is our full chat with Jon Turteltaub, plus a 2016 update from Cage himself.