In Now You See Me: Now You Don’t, the third installment in the magic-fueled heist series, the Horsemen return with even more shocking illusions. And this time, a new generation of illusionists has joined the team.
At the film’s New York premiere, several cast members momentarily went into magician mode, impressing Variety with a series of expertly executed card tricks.
“We worked with Magic Coach Ben Seidman and Handsome Jack, and I mean, when we started, we didn’t even know how to shuffle cards,” Dominic Sessa, who plays newcomer Bosco, told Variety on the carpet. “But by the time I set it up, we were all doing a bunch of different card tricks and vanishes and stuff. It was great.”
Regulars from the Now You See Me series also learned new tricks while building on the skills they showed off in the previous two games.
“I’m very good at throwing cards, so I found a new way to throw cards. It sounds silly, but it’s a lot harder than you think,” said Dave Franco. “This is me in a hotel room for a month learning the hand flash that appears on the screen for two seconds.”
Woody Harrelson added, “With the other two movies, you’d think I’d have gotten into magic, but this movie finally started to develop my passion for magic even more. And now I’m here to say I have some tricks up my sleeve.”
Meanwhile, Isla Fisher, who returned as Henry Reeves in the latest film after missing 2016’s Now You See Me 2, had to hone his magic skills for one particular scene in particular.
“There was a seven-minute long scene that we shot in chronological order, and everyone had a trick, actually two tricks, but some had as many as three. If we messed up, we had to reshoot,” Fisher said. “We finished filming. I think it was one day, and that was the only time I thought, ‘Come on, Ira, don’t screw up your magic trick or the whole crew and cast will be mad.'”
Now You See Me: Now You Don’t reunites the original Four Horsemen, J. Daniel Atlas (Jesse Eisenberg), Merritt McKinney (Harrelson), Henry Reeves (Fisher), and Jack Wilder (Franco), and teams up with a new group of magicians to steal the world’s largest diamond, known as the Heart Diamond. The cast also includes Sessa, Ariana Greenblatt, Justice Smith, Lizzy Caplan, Rosamund Pike, and Morgan Freeman.
To ensure authenticity, the creative team partnered with consultants from Los Angeles’ famed Magic Castle to design an illusion that feels as real as it looks. The film relies heavily on practical effects to seamlessly blend illusion and action. However, this commitment also came with some flaws. Jesse Eisenberg revealed that he broke his finger while filming a fight scene inside a revolving hallway.
“The hallway rotated 360 degrees, so you were standing on the floor and all of a sudden the floor became the wall and then the ceiling,” Eisenberg recalled, adding that he hit a “very hard piece of wood” and injured his finger.
He continued, “It was the greatest set I’ve ever worked on. It was also the set that loved me more than any other person or set I’ve ever worked with.”
“We wanted to use as much hands-on magic as possible. We wanted to do everything in-camera, without relying on visual effects, motion graphics, or other tricks to convey the magic,” explained director Ruben Fleischer. “I wanted it to be as real as possible, as if I were going to a magic show myself and just wanted to watch the show. Magic shows don’t have any cuts or edits, so I felt very, very lucky to be able to make everything as natural and realistic as possible.”
“Now You See Me: Now You Don’t” is currently in theaters.
