As much fun as I had with the first National Treasure, it’s amazing to me that people are still excited for a third one. Even if the second one had been good (it wasn’t) this seems like a concept which runs out of gas after a movie or two. But it’s still going, people are seriously excited about it (no really), and now we know when National Treasure 3 will hit theaters.

In an interview with Coming Soon, director John Turteltaub revealed that they plan to start shooting the second sequel late this fall or early this winter with the goal of having National Treasure 3 in theaters for Christmas in 2011. This timeline however, makes a lot of assumptions. From the context of Turteltaub’s interview it sounds like the haven’t actually locked up the cast yet and don’t even really have a script.

They’ve got plenty of time to get all of that done. It was only in April Carlo Bernard and Doug Miro were hired to start work on the National Treasure 3 screenplay and Turteltaub sounds pretty confident that they’ll be ready when the time comes. Rumor has it that the next Treasure film could take the franchise overseas. If they do, I’d suggest changing the title to International Treasure.