There's more gold over them hills!

Speculation concerning the next installments in the National Treasure series floods the Net today when it was announced that Disney registered the domain names "NationalTreasure3DVD.com" and "NationalTreasure4DVD.com" yesterday. 

National Treasure 2: Book of Secrets disappointed critics but still managed to bring in over $365 million worldwide, putting it ahead of its predecessor in 2004. As seems to be the case with series like NT, it doesn't really matter what the critics say so long as there are butts in seats. So no wonder Bruckheimer and his friends at Disney are already thinking about shipping the Gates family out on another quest. 

Jim Hill says that we can expect NT3 somewhere in the neighborhood of Christmas 2010. In the meantime, Disney hopes to keep squeezing dimes out of the franchise by launching a series of children's books. The first in the series is called Changing Tides by Catherine Hapka. Hill claims the second book Midnight Ride, also by Hapka, will be released next month. 

What can we expect for the Gates family in this third installment? Rumors about a journey to Easter Island in search of Atlantis are already flying. Why Atlantis? For the pure, clean power source that was supposedly lost forever when the city vanished, of course! Who better than Nicolas Cage and Co. to fix global warming?

In addition, though no domain names have been registered, news of the next romp on the high seas for the Pirates gang is beginning to appear. At the end of the last installment, At World's End, we left Jack Sparrow examining a piece of a map that he had stolen from Barbossa so that he could follow in the footsteps, or wake I suppose, of Ponce de León to find the Fountain of Youth. 

Maybe this time around we could have some real swashbuckling fun instead of spending two and a half hours watching Keira Knightley and Orlando Bloom pine for each other. Bring back the real pirates!