Now You Don’t Is A Stronger Sequel Thanks To Its 9-Year Gap [Exclusive]

This article contains spoilers for “Now You See Me: Now You Don’t.”

The first “Now You See Me” movie hit theaters in 2013, and its sequel, “Now You See Me 2,” came out in 2016. Now, after almost a full decade, director Ruben Fleischer is bringing the magical heist franchise back to life in “Now You See Me: Now You Don’t” with its original cast, alongside newcomers Charlie, Bosco, and June — portrayed by “I See the TV Glow’s” Justice Smith, “The Holdovers” star Dominic Sessa, and “Barbie” standout Ariana Greenblatt, respectively. Jesse Eisenberg, Woody Harrelson, Isla Fisher, Dave Franco, and Morgan Freeman reprise their roles as J. Daniel Atlas, Merritt McKinney, Henley Reeves, Jack Wilder, and Thaddeus Bradley, a group of super-talented magicians who stage Robin Hood-style heists to steal from the rich and give to the poor.

/Film’s Bill Bira spoke exclusively to Fleischer, who said he really loves the idea of long-awaited sequels. “If something really is beloved and the audience is still around 10 years later, I think being able to revisit the characters in the world is really satisfying. If there had only been one ‘Zombieland,’ I think it would be great.” (Hilariously, Fleischer, who also helmed 2009’s “Zombieland” and its 2019 sequel “Double Tap,” didn’t mention that Eisenberg and Harrelson also headlined that franchise.) “But the fact that we get to check in with those characters 10 years later [is cool]. We see how they’ve evolved, they’re now living in the White House, Abigail [Breslin’s] character has grown up,” he continued. “She was a little kid in the first one, now she’s a teenager dealing with teenager things. It allows for an evolution on a scale that most sequels … you don’t get to see the passage of time in the same way.”

Ruben Fleischer may not have directed the first or second film in the “Now You See Me” franchise — Louis Leterrier helmed the first film and was succeeded by future “Wicked” director Jon M. Chu for the second — but he’ll be the first to tell you that nobody actually intended for nearly a full decade to pass before a third movie got off the ground. Still, according to Fleischer, this breathing room was a blessing in disguise.

“And ‘Now You See Me,’ it certainly wasn’t by design that it took so long to have the next one, but I think it did allow us some perspective on what people loved about the first two and allowed us the opportunity to revisit it through a new lens of these new characters and to focus on the things that have stayed with audiences over the course of that intervening time,” Fleischer said. “And to really showcase those elements, which I think is the charisma and the dynamic of all the actors and their relationships.”

I have to agree with him — while the time-honored trope of “getting the gang back together” can sometimes feel tired, it’s legitimately fun to watch the Four Horsemen (Atlas, Henley, Jack, and Merritt) reassemble and bring Bosco, Charlie, and June on board, combining their various talents to take down the evil diamond baroness Veronika Vanderberg (Rosamund Pike). Plus, there’s another familiar face that returns for “Now You See Me: Now You Don’t,” and I don’t think I’m the only one who was pleased to see Lizzy Caplan come back for another round. 

The biggest secret within “Now You See Me: Now You Don’t” isn’t technically magic-related — it’s actually a casting “trick,” if you will. Fans of the franchise probably recall that, due to Isla Fisher’s real-life pregnancy, she couldn’t be part of “Now You See Me 2,” so Lizzy Caplan’s Lula May ended up joining the rest of the Horsemen in her stead. When it was announced that Fisher would return for the threequel, some fans were understandably concerned that Caplan’s character would be ignored. Thankfully, that’s not the case! Early in the movie, Lula’s former flame mentions that she moved to Paris, and when Jack, Merritt, and June find themselves in captivity at a French prison, Lula arrives to save the day.

According to Flesicher, he was thrilled to address this elephant in the room. “I was really proud of the fact that we got to kind of rectify the Henley-Lula swap that went virtually unexplained in the second movie and that we got a chance to service that story,” he said before touching on the young, new additions to the cast. “I think there was also this fun kind of meta quality to the fact that Dominic, Ariana, and Justice grew up loving these movies and these characters. Similarly, their characters grew up loving the Horsemen, and they became magicians because they were inspired by the Horsemen in the context of the film.”

Unsurprisingly, Fleischer says that the next generation of actors felt similarly in real life. “That was happening kind of offscreen as well, where these young actors got to work with these more established actors who they’d admired their whole lives,” he revealed. “So there’s just so much positivity in doing a very belated but very beloved sequel to these films.”

“Now You See Me: Now You Don’t,” a multigenerational magical heist flick, is in theaters now.