The Horsemen are back with more mind-bending illusions in “Now You See Me: Now You Don’t,” the third installment of the magic-fueled heist series — and this time, a new generation of illusionists joins the team.
At the film’s New York premiere, several cast members took a moment to slip into magician mode, impressing Variety with a flurry of expertly executed card tricks.
“We worked with our magic coaches Ben Seidman and Handsome Jack, and I mean, I didn’t even know how to shuffle cards when I started,” Dominic Sessa, who plays newcomer Bosco, told Variety on the carpet. “But by the time I got to set, we were all doing a bunch of different card tricks and vanishes and stuff like that. It was amazing.”
Even the regulars from “Now You See Me” franchise learned new tricks while further honing the skills they showcased in the previous two films.
“I’m very good at throwing cards, and so I found new ways to throw cards, which sounds silly, but it’s much harder than you think,” Dave Franco said. “It’s me in a hotel room for a month learning a hand flourish that is maybe on screen for two seconds.”
Woody Harrelson added, “With the other two movies, you’d think I would have gotten into magic, but it was finally this one that I did start to develop more of a passion for it — and now I’d like to say I have a few tricks.”
Meanwhile, Isla Fisher — who returns as Henley Reeves in the latest installment after missing 2016’s “Now You See Me 2” — had to brush up on her magic skills, particularly for one specific sequence.
“There was one scene that was seven minutes long that we shot chronologically, and everybody had a trick — or actually had two tricks, but some people had, like, three — and if you messed it up, then you had to reshoot it,” Fisher said. “We shot it over, I think it was a day, and that was the only time that I was like, ‘Come on, Isla, don’t mess up your magic trick, or the whole crew and cast are going to be mad.’”
“Now You See Me: Now You Don’t” reunites the original Four Horsemen — J. Daniel Atlas (Jesse Eisenberg), Merritt McKinney (Harrelson), Henley Reeves (Fisher) and Jack Wilder (Franco) — as they work 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 illusions that would feel as real as they look. The film leans heavily on practical effects to seamlessly blend the illusions and action — but that commitment came with a few bruises: Jesse Eisenberg revealed he fractured a finger while filming a fight scene inside a rotating corridor.
“The corridor turns 360 degrees, so you’re standing on the floor and suddenly, the floor is on the wall and then it’s the ceiling,” Eisenberg recalled, adding that he injured his finger by hitting a “very hard piece of wood.”
He continued, “It was the most incredible set I’ve ever gotten to work on. It was also the set that didn’t like me more than any other person or set I’ve ever worked with.”
“I wanted to make sure to use as much practical magic as I possibly could — wanting to do everything in camera and not rely on visual effects or motion graphics or any other tricks to convey the magic,” director Ruben Fleischer explained. “I wanted it to be as real as possible, as if you had gone to a magic show yourself and just wanted to see a show. They don’t have cuts or edits in magic shows, so I felt very, very lucky to be able to bring it all to life as naturalistically and realistically as possible.”
“Now You See Me: Now You Don’t” is in theaters now.