Now You See Me debuted its first trick in 2013 by conjuring a global box office cache of $351.7 million. Three years later, Now You See Me 2 nearly matched that impressive feat, and together the double act brought the franchise total to over $686.6 million. After vanishing for nearly a decade, the Horsemen have rematerialized with new recruits, higher stakes, and bigger illusions in Now You See Me: Now You Don’t. With a daring diamond heist at the forefront, the Horsemen mastermind a plot to discredit a dangerous family crime syndicate that wants to see the magicians disappear for good.
Director and Now You See Me fan Ruben Fleischer (Zombieland, Venom, and Uncharted) reunites the original Horsemen, played by Jesse Eisenberg, Woody Harrelson, Dave Franco, Isla Fisher, and Morgan Freeman, while introducing new illusionists to the confidence game (Justice Smith, Dominic Sessa, and Ariana Greenblatt). With a focus on the practical magic of in-camera effects and an emphasis on creating a collective theater experience, Fleischer’s cinematic sleight of hand aims to keep audiences guessing. Ahead of the film’s November 14 release from Lionsgate, director Ruben Fleischer joins Boxoffice Pro to reflect on the craft of screen illusion and the magic of making movies.
Did entering this franchise as a fan give you a unique perspective on bringing the next chapter to screens?
Yeah, I think so. I have an outsider’s perspective, so I’m not beholden in any way to the previous two movies, but I’m also a big fan of the previous two movies. I’m also a fan of the cast and have a history with some of the cast members. I felt like I was able to bring a little bit of old and a little bit of new at the same time, but I approached the movie as an audience member. I thought to myself, “What would I want to see out of this franchise?” It’s been dormant for 10 years, and in reinvigorating it, “What are the things I love most from the past movies? What are the things, if I can effect change, where I feel like I can shift it in a different direction?” I think that somewhat more objective perspective allowed me to imbue a little bit of new energy into the franchise.
Boxoffice Pro talked to Jesse Eisenberg about A Real Pain while you were filming Now You Don’t. What has it been like for you to watch him come into his own as a director, and how has that collaboration evolved over the years?
It’s such a dream. Jesse is truly the best person. We have collaborated for 16 years now, and this was our fourth movie working together. Over that time, we both got married and both had kids; we’ve evolved together as people, but also as creatives. I take such delight in seeing his evolution. I’ve always known how smart and funny he is, and without sounding patronizing or condescending, it’s made me really proud to watch him evolve as a filmmaker. He’s just so creative and so talented, and I’m so excited for all that the future holds in store for him. He has a new movie that he shot last year that he’s in post[-production] on now. I can’t wait to see it. I visited the set while they were shooting, which was really fun: Getting to see him in director mode was awesome. I really admire him and consider him a close friend.
With Woody Harrelson as well, is there a shorthand that comes with continued collaboration?
Absolutely. With Woody and Jesse, we’ve done things together, and we’ve done things apart. I’ve done a movie with Woody and not Jesse, and with Jesse and not Woody. I’ve done movies with both of them, with Zombieland [and Double Tap.] This was my fourth time working with each of them. Every actor has their own peccadilloes, but I think more than anything, it’s just trust at this point. I think a big component of the dynamic between actor and director is trust. We’ve certainly cultivated a lot of trust in that time and love working together.
I think Woody really enjoys our collaboration, and he’s really proud of this movie. When he saw it, he paid me huge compliments and made me feel really good. Part of that trust is not wanting to let somebody down, and when actors put faith in a director, they have an expectation that the movie is going to be good. I guess I felt really proud of myself and satisfied that he was so happy with the end result of the film.
How did you design Now You Don’t for the big screen?
It really plays with an audience. Each time one of the Horsemen came on the screen, there was big applause, and people cheered at the end. It really is a crowd-pleasing movie. It’s what distinguishes watching it at home or watching it by yourself versus having that collective experience with a theater audience.
It was designed for a theater-going audience to enjoy together because it has so many laughs and so many twists, turns, and reveals. One of the proudest things about this movie for me was when I first saw it with an audience. When the big reveal happens in the third act, there was an audible gasp. I couldn’t have been happier because I knew that the trick worked, and people appreciated and enjoyed it.
These are ensemble films, and the ensemble has never been bigger, but it feels so balanced across the board. How did you find that balance while bringing in new faces?
In the inception of this installment, given that it had been dormant for a while, we wanted to invigorate it with new blood by way of these three new characters. In a way, they serve as the audience’s POV because there are a lot of kids who grew up on the Horsemen, and similarly in the story we’re telling, our three new magicians grew up admiring and loving the Horsemen. The pedigree of the existing cast is really strong, and the dynamic between them is just so fun to watch. It was important to us to find people who we felt would bring that special something to the ensemble and were believable as magicians—that have the same level of intelligence that I think is consistent among the cast. But also [actors that have] a playfulness and who can appreciate the tone. This is a movie that’s meant to be fun and funny. Sure, it has action and magic and twists and turns, but at the end of the day, it’s just a fun movie. Having actors that could convey that spirit was super important.
We got so lucky with—we call them the new crew—Ariana [Greenblatt], Dom [Sessa], and Justice [Smith]. They have each been doing really elevated work prior to this and have distinguished themselves among this next generation of actors. They each bring a different energy that’s unique among the energies of the existing cast. It felt like the chemistry really worked. I loved working with them. There was a fun, parallel dynamic of what happens in the story, where three kids meet their idols. We had three young kids who grew up watching Jesse, Woody, and Isla in these movies. It was really fun to see that mirror the true-life dynamic of these younger actors working with these much more established actors.
There’s a great focus on in-camera practical effects too. What was the most difficult practical shot to get?
That relates to what we started talking about: bringing a fresh perspective to the movie. As an outside observer, as an audience member, I felt like perhaps the movies had started to lean a little too heavily on CGI magic. For me, it was really important to try and make everything in the film as believable as possible and to have it be as realistic and practical as possible. That was the stress test for all the tricks and concepts in the film. It’s also challenging to figure out what kinds of things you can do.
Certainly for me, the things that I’m most proud of, and that were the most fun, if not also the most challenging to shoot, were those rooms in the château. There’s the Ames room with the height differential, which a lot of people are familiar with, but getting to build one as if it was a room in an old French mansion was really cool. All the props in the room had to be 3D printed to fit their perfect perspective as they are situated in the frame. That was really cool but also challenging to get the exact perspective right. It affected where we put the camera and everything else.
The spinning corridor is something that goes back to Fred Astaire dancing on the ceiling [in Royal Wedding] and has been used in movies forever, but I was really excited to have that illusion happen in the film and also to design action around it. There’s also been plenty of hall of mirrors scenes in movies, but with visual effects, we can make it more interesting because you can erase the cameraman in the mirror. In the past, I think that limited the way they could shoot those sequences because they would be shooting themselves. Now we have the ability to point the camera in any direction and then later go in and clean up the reflection.
The coolest environment, in my opinion, was what we call the infinity staircase. That was all practical and in-camera. Just standing in that room was so trippy. I think the production designer told me that if you look in one direction, you can see 78 reflections of yourself at once. It’s built on a 45-degree angle, so it reflects the ceiling to the floor and the floor to the wall. In all directions, you’re seeing this infinite expanse of reflections. That was probably the most challenging because I didn’t know quite what I was looking for, but I knew I wanted something spectacular, in-camera, and practical. When we designed it via smaller tabletop models as proof of concept, we iterated it to get to that point, but then when we finally built it for real and we were standing in it, it was truly one of the coolest sets I’ve ever been on.
Like Uncharted, these are globetrotting movies. How did you capture that expansive, cinematic feeling throughout?
It’s such a privilege to get to travel the world and make a movie. We were based in Budapest, Hungary, which played for a lot of different locations. One of the cool things about Budapest is that it really does have a lot of different environments. We also did a day and a half in Antwerp, which is the diamond capital of the world, and then we went to Abu Dhabi for the finale and shot there. But we made it seem as if we were also in South Africa and New York, even though we were confined to two or three countries.
We tried to make it feel as expansive as possible. That’s a signature of the franchise: All the previous installments have a degree of globetrotting to them, so it’s part of the fun of taking the audience on an adventure. For me personally, it was great to experience these different places and cultures and collaborate with filmmakers all over the world.
Is there an experience at the movie theater that was pure magic for you?
The reality is that there’s magic in all movies. “Movie magic” is a common phrase, but I think that ability, for time immemorial, for filmmakers to take you on a journey and to create wonder, is core. Why I love magic is that feeling of wonder. That’s something that filmmakers forever have been doing—creating wonder. There’s a certain genre of movies where there’s a trick that’s played on the audience. An obvious example is The Usual Suspects and another is The Sixth Sense. Watching those movies and knowing that the film played a trick on you does have a magical quality.
I can remember that feeling of watching The Usual Suspects, where we get to the end and the reveal comes and you’re like, “Holy smokes!” That was the greatest thing because you never see it coming. It’s just so satisfying. You just have a smile on your face and want to rush back to see the movie again. That was something really important to me about this movie, to try and provide that same feeling, not just the individual tricks and set pieces, but to have the movie as a whole functioning as a trick and pull the rug out from under the audience to a degree. That was the aspiration—that the movie works like a magic trick. I don’t even know what to call them, but those were specific references. The Usual Suspects was a profoundly magical movie experience because they played a trick on me, and I didn’t see it coming.
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