Louis Leterrier Will Return For 'Now You See Me' Sequel
One of the summer's biggest surprises, both critically and financially, was Louis Leterrier's magic-based heist film Now You See Me. Sporting a solid cast, an original story and good word of mouth, the underdog film made over $115 million domestic and almost $300 million worldwide.
So what happens when a small film has some big success? You guessed it. A sequel. Turns out, Leterrier will once again be at the helm.
MovieWeb and Coming Soon both broke the news of Leterrier's return. The director of The Transporter, Clash of the Titans and The Incredible Hulk said the following to Coming Soon.
Obviously [a possible sequel] was always part of it. I'm currently, not writing, but we're coming up with the story, the plot, the everything, the twist and the new characters and everything. It was always at least a diptych, two movies, to tell one long story, so yeah, I'm very much involved in it. I don't know if it's going to be my next movie. I know we want to do it pretty fast but I might be able to do another movie in between.
He added a little more when talking to MovieWeb:
We're actively working on the sequel to Now You See Me, so that is happening. We're writing it, and it's pretty fun. We had such a great time doing that and we loved the characters. Our biggest problem now is that we have too many great ideas. We're sort of saying, 'What if he would do that? That would be amazing, I want to see this, I want to see that.' We want it to be intense and as twisty as the first one, but also learn more about the characters and go deeper, what a great sequel should do. That's going to take not too long, but enough so, just like in the first one, it's perfectly crafted. If you think about it, David Copperfield takes five years to prep, to create and prep. We just have a couple of years to do ours. David Copperfield was always saying, 'Your biggest challenge is you only have two years to do your movie, or one year to do your movie.'
The first film succeeded based on its twists, turns and surprises. For the sequel, the major challenge will be defying expectations when the audience knows what to expect. Leterrier says they want to do it "fast" but hopefully that doesn't mean it's too fast to be good.
At least the first film left the characters in a very good spot to move forward with the story. I won't spoil it here in case you haven't see the movie yet.
Now You See Me hits Blu-ray September 3. It's well-worth checking out if you haven't already. Plus, Leterrier says there a deleted scene on it that they almost put after the credits that sets up this sequel.