Disney+ announced early last year that it was working on a National Treasure TV series starring Lisette Alexis as Jess Morales, a 20-year-old DREAMer who goes on an adventure to “uncover her mysterious family history and recover lost treasure.” National Treasure stuff, basically.
But one of the hooks of the original movies was that they had famous people (Nic Cage! Jon Voight! Others!), and now the Disney+ show has finally followed suit and added a famous person to its ranks: According to a press release, Catherine Zeta-Jones as joined the show as a series regular, playing Billie, a “badass billionaire, black-market antiquities expert, and treasure hunter who lives by her own code.” So, if you can excuse the dumb joke, it sounds like she might be… a bad guy. (Her name is Billie. Get it?)
The press release doesn’t tip its hand in that direction, simply saying that she “transformed herself from a penniless orphan to a shrewd, stylish businesswoman and adventurer,” adding that she’s “used to getting what she wants—and she wants the Pan-American treasure.” Sounds like a bad guy, right?
Maybe not a fully ever bad guy (if we’re talking adventure stories), but the kind of bad guy who poses as a friend but has their own ulterior motives for finding this treasure and inevitably betrays hero with some half-condescending, half-encouraging speech about how the hero really is a good treasure hunter but all they did was deliver the treasure right into the villain’s hands. You know, like in every treasure movie ever, national or otherwise.
The aforementioned press release doesn’t say when National Treasure might premiere on Disney+, but this isn’t the sort of franchise that just gives up that kind of information. You have to follow a complex series of clues that inevitably teach you some secret true history of the world.