A third “Night at the Museum” has been in the works for a few years, and the first trailer of “Secret of the Tomb” has been finally released. The 2006 original was a delightful surprise, while the 2009 sequel, “Battle of the Smithsonian”, lacked the previous film’s charm. For the threequel, the main cast is back, including stars Ben Stiller, Robin Williams, Owen Wilson and Ricky Gervais, as well as director Shawn Levy.
This plot once again takes the characters away from NYC (this time to London) but brings back the original’s theme of the statues and displays coming to life at night. Levy revealed in a piece for Entertainment Weekly earlier this year that the three stingy old men, Dick Van Dyke, Bill Cobbs and the late Mickey Rooney (who died in April) also make return appearances. Levy was honored to have filmed Rooney’s final on-screen performance.
Joining the ensemble are Sir Ben Kingsley and Rebel Wilson. My expectations are low for their characters providing big laughs, but the trailer does include a few funny one-liners and promising situations. This installment could wrap-up the elongated franchise (which very easily could’ve ended after the original) in a nice way.
But in order to achieve the box office success of the previous two, “Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb” is going to have to defeat another movie going after the same, family audience. “Annie”, starring Quvenzhane Wallis (“Beasts of the Southern Wild”), Jamie Foxx and Cameron Diaz, opens the same day as “NATM3” – December 19th. And two days earlier, the final “Hobbit” – “The Battle of the Five Armies”, will hit theaters. I hope the lights haven’t burned out just yet on the “NATM” series, but convincing audiences to return to the Natural History Museum one more time is going to be tough. Good news for 20th Century Fox: the studio has nearly five months to generate some buzz and momentum with a rigorous marketing campaign. Bad news: Sony began their campaign for “Annie” over five months ago.