WIRE Buzz: Disney reportedly digging up National Treasure 3; Motherland: Fort Salem trailer; more

A 12-year wait might as well be pocket change when a literal National Treasure is at stake. That’s how long it’s been since National Treasure: Book of Secrets showed up on movie screens sporting another national treasure — actor Nicolas Cage — in the role of relic hunter Benjamin Franklin Gates.

Now it appears as though Disney is gearing up to revive the franchise, begun in 2004 with the original National Treasure, with an often-discussed, long-delayed third installment. Details are thin on this one, but at least it’s something: According to The Hollywood Reporter, a National Treasure 3 is in the works with a script from Bad Boys for Life writer Chris Bremner.

Cage, who’s been part of the on-again, off-again chatter about a sequel over the years, isn’t mentioned in THR’s quick-hit report, and there’s been no additional word from Disney about the third National Treasure movie since the story landed. Producer Jerry Bruckheimer, who teamed with Bremner on the just-released Bad Boys for Life, is reportedly slated to produce National Treasure 3 (not an official title), continuing his role as producer of the first two films.

At last check back in summer of 2018, Jon Turteltaub, director of the first two films, said the next National Treasure sequel was likely to end up as a straight-to-streaming movie for what’s since become Disney+. There’s no word with today’s fresh news, though, on whether that’ll still be the case when (if) the new movie actually does arrive.

Disney’s Freeform channel has concocted a new teaser trailer for Motherland: Fort Salem, giving us a witches’ brew of magic and military intrigue ahead of the new series’ debut this March. 

Set in an alternate version of America where witches actually help defend the country as sanctioned agents acting at the government’s command, the 10-episode series will follow an all-female witch army that wages supernatural warfare on the front lines. Check out the trailer below:

The story zeroes in on the show’s three leads as they progress from “basic training in combat magic,” according to Freeform, to their first deployment in an actual conflict zone. Starring up-and-coming actor Ashley Nicole Williams alongside Taylor Hickson (Deadpool) and Jessica Sutton (Escape Room), Motherland: Fort Salem casts its spell at Freeform on March 18.

Freeform also revealed at this week’s Television Critics’ Association press tour (via Deadline) that the third season of Siren, the mermaid drama for fans who like their mythic sea creatures vicious and ambitious, is also just around the corner. Reportedly the most-watched show last year in Freeform’s entire lineup of originals, Siren heads back to the mysterious town of Bristol Cove when Season 3 debuts on April 2.

We’ve been waiting with bated breath for a while on news about the upcoming sequel to Don’t Breathe, director Fede Álvarez’s 2016 sleeper horror hit about three kids who decided to steal from the wrong blind man. 

Now, with a finished script in hand, the sequel to Don’t Breathe has reportedly landed a director. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Álvarez is taking a step back to hand the directing reins over to longtime writing collaborator Rodo Sayagues, who’s already worked with Álvarez on 2013’s Evil Dead remake, the upcoming Monsterpocalypse movie, and, of course, the original Don’t Breathe itself.

The first film raked in $89.2 million at the North American box office against a budget of just $9.9 million, a tidy multiple that all but assured we’d eventually be getting a sequel. The upcoming movie marks Sayagues’ first turn in the director’s chair, and will return Stephen Lang, once again, to the role of the sinister Blind Man. 

THR reports that the new movie will unfold “several years after” the events of the first film, “with the Blind Man living in quiet solace … until his past sins catch up to him.” Álvarez is sharing production credit with Sam Raimi and Ghost House Pictures’ Rob Tapert, with reported backing from Sony Pictures’ Stage 6 Films division. There’s no word on a release date yet, so we’ll try not to exhale as we await more news.