Now You See Me’s Original Cast Is Coming Back for One Last Job
Now You 3 Me.
Heist movies can be hit-and-miss. There’s a fine line between a clever plan that feels inventive and original and a gimmicky plan that feels unbelievable, and many movies try to toe that line without going over it. Occasionally, there’s a movie that dares to go out of an audience’s comfort zone and show something truly inventive, and it often is met with mixed results.
But against all odds, one of the most divisive heist movie franchises ever is getting another installment — and bringing back the cast that made it great.
2013’s Now You See Me, directed by Louis Leterrier, was a heist movie unlike any other. It followed four magicians: a stage magician (Jesse Eisenberg), an escapist (Isla Fisher), a hypnotist (Woody Harrelson), and a sleight-of-hand artist (Dave Franco). Together, they make up the Four Horsemen, a group of criminals who use their skills to pull off complicated robberies.
The original Four Horsemen in Now You See Me.
In 2016, the film was followed by Now You See Me 2, directed by Jon M. Chu, which saw one of the Horsemen, Fisher’s Henley Reeves, replaced by Lizzy Caplan as a new character. The sequel amped up the stakes and the all-star ensemble cast, including new addition Daniel Radcliffe. Before the sequel had even premiered, Lionsgate had already started development on a third film, but it seemed to flounder after that.
But at CinemaCon 2024, Lionsgate announced Now You See Me 3 is officially in the works, from yet another director: Venom’s Ruben Fleischer. What’s more, the original cast, including Isla Fisher, is set to return for the new film.
Now You See Me 2’s expanded cast and story brought the series to new heights.
It’s a risky move, considering how divisive the first two movies have been, but as they’ve aged, opinion is starting to shift on the viewing the franchise as a unique combination of crime thriller and comedy, before audiences started to look back on it as cringe, then, as camp.
More than a decade on, it’s possible the Now You See Me franchise has finally reached a point where fans can meet it on its level: not as an Ocean’s-style slick heist movie, and not as a hokey self-aware comedy movie, but something in between. The movies have never taken themselves seriously, so viewers shouldn’t take them seriously, either.
