National Treasure Is Quietly Dominating Hulu's Charts Right Now

More than two decades after its theatrical release, Nicolas Cage's National Treasure has resurfaced on Hulu's most-watched list — a reminder that the film's particular brand of breakneck, historically flavored adventure has lost none of its crowd-pleasing momentum. It is, in many ways, the kind of vindication that slow-burn classics earn through sheer rewatchability rather than critical consensus.

A Box Office Winner That Critics Underestimated

When director Jon Turteltaub's film arrived in November 2004, reviews were politely dismissive at best. Critics recognized the Indiana Jones lineage — the history-obsessed protagonist, the race against a well-heeled villain, the sense that every crumbling landmark contains a plot-advancing secret — but largely found the execution too lightweight to take seriously. Audiences disagreed with considerable force. Against a reported production budget of $100 million, National Treasure went on to gross $331 million worldwide, with $173 million coming from domestic markets and a further $158 million internationally, according to Collider. A six-month theatrical run is not the performance of a film that failed to connect.

What the critics missed, and what Hulu viewers are apparently rediscovering, is that Cage's performance as historian and code-breaker Benjamin Gates operates in a register all its own. Gates is not the weathered cynic that Harrison Ford perfected across multiple decades; he is an idealist, animated by genuine reverence for American history, and Cage leans into that sincerity rather than undercutting it with irony. Sean Bean's antagonist Ian Howe provides a credible foil — a man who wants the treasure for purely mercenary reasons — and the tension between their competing motivations gives the film more thematic grounding than its popcorn reputation suggests.

Cage's Streaming Momentum Is No Accident

The Hulu resurgence does not exist in isolation. Cage has been having something of a sustained streaming moment, anchored most visibly by his lead role in the Prime Video series Spider-Noir, a live-action spin-off drawing from the animated Spider-Verse universe. The show, which features a supporting cast including Lamorne Morris, Brendan Gleeson, and Jack Huston among others, has performed strongly for Prime Video and reinforced what National Treasure already demonstrated: Cage at the center of a genre piece, fully committed and unafraid of earnestness, is a reliable draw. It also continues a broader trend of actors finding new audiences through streaming platforms — Hugh Jackman's The Sheep Detectives becoming a Prime Video hit being another recent example of the phenomenon.

For Cage specifically, the pattern speaks to a career that has always rewarded those willing to engage with it on its own terms rather than through the lens of any given critical moment. His connection to comic-book mythology even predates Spider-Noir, something explored in the context of his nearly realized Superman for Tim Burton in the 1990s.

What Comes Next for Benjamin Gates

The streaming success of National Treasure inevitably reignites conversation about the franchise's future. A sequel, National Treasure: Book of Secrets, arrived in 2007 and performed comparably well, but a third installment has spent years in various states of rumor and denial. Cage himself appeared to close the door on the project as recently as 2024, stating bluntly that National Treasure 3 simply did not exist. The picture shifted earlier this year, however, when producer Jerry Bruckheimer — whose fingerprints are on a significant portion of high-concept Hollywood action cinema from the past four decades — indicated at the Producers' Guild Awards that a screenplay was actively in development and progressing well.

Whether that translates into an actual production remains to be seen. Hollywood development is littered with scripts that never became films. But the timing of National Treasure's Hulu resurgence is at minimum a useful data point for any studio executive weighing the commercial logic of reviving the franchise. Audiences are still showing up for Benjamin Gates.

In a landscape where bold swings on streaming originals are becoming increasingly common, the enduring appeal of a well-crafted adventure built around a charismatic lead and a love of history feels, if anything, more refreshing than it did in 2004.