According to Deadline, up-and-coming young actress Lisette Alexis (We Need To Do Something) has officially been tapped for the leading role in Disney+’s upcoming National Treasure series, which is being billed as an expansion of the Nicolas Cage-led film franchise. The Mexican-American actress is set to portray the role of Jess Morales. Production is expected to begin in early 2022.
Her character description reads: “Jess is a Latina whose brilliant and resourceful mind loves a good mystery, and has a natural talent for solving puzzles. Over the course of the show, Jess will uncover her own buried history, as well as the truth about her parents and her connection to a long-lost treasure.”
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The first episode of the National Treasure series will be directed by Mira Nair (Queen of Katwe) from a screenplay written by original film writers Marianne and Cormac Wibberley. It hails from the original films’ producer Jerry Bruckheimer and the Wibberleys, who are all serving as executive producers.
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The series is set to explore timely issues of identity, community, historical authorship, and patriotism, told from the point of view of Jess Morales, a twenty-year-old DREAMer who, with her diverse group of friends, sets off on the adventure of a lifetime to uncover her mysterious family history and recover lost treasure.
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The series is a production by Jerry Bruckheimer Television with ABC Signature as its studio. It is also executive produced by the first film’s director Jon Turteltaub, Jonathan Littman, KristieAnne Reed, and Rick Muirragui, who is also set as a writer.
Before the development of the upcoming series came to be, Disney and Jerry Bruckheimer have been developing the third installment to National Treasure since 2008. Cage previously expressed interest to return, believing that the new story should take them international. The most recent update about the project was last year when Bruckheimer confirmed that the third film is still in development with the script still being written.
