The original Now You See Me was such a popular film that the studio decided to green light a third film in the franchise before the second was even done with production. Now, the third film has taken a big step forward. A new pair of fairly fresh screenwriters has been brought on board to handle the script for Now You See Me 3. This will apparently take the story out of the hands of the people who handled the writing for the first two movies.
The story for Now You See Me was created by Boaz Yakin and Edward Ricourt, who then went on to collaborate on the screenplay with Ed Soloman. Solomon then went on to write the script for NowYou See Me 2 on his own. Now, Deadline is reporting that the writing duties for Now__You See Me 3 will be handled by the relatively new pair of Neil Widener and Gavin James. The two have yet to see a major motion picture hit the screen yet, but it would seem there is a fair amount of confidence in their abilities, as the duo is also handling the script for Dwayne Johnson's San Andreas 2.
It would appear that the rest of Now You See Me 3 will look a lot like the previous entry, the cast from Now You See Me 3, including Woody Harrelson, Dave Franco, Jesse Eisenberg and Lizzy Caplan are all expected to return and John M. Chu who directed the last film will also be back.
The films deal with a quartet of stage magicians known as the Four Horseman who are also master criminals and use their skills at slight of hand to pull off massive robberies. Both have been received with mixed reviews by critics but the box office has embraced the franchise, especially internationally. It's almost a little surprising that there hadn't already been somebody working on a script, especially considering that some degree of pre-production has been going on for around a year. The fact that the second film in the franchise didn't quite perform to the level of the first may have had something to do with it.
Regardless, the franchise is now certainly moving forward. Since we have not seen San Andreas 2 yet we have little to go on as far as what a script from Neil Widener and Gavin James will look like. At this point, we don't even know which of these two films we're likely to see first. The Rock's dance card is pretty full at this point and even if the script was ready he wouldn't even begin to start shooting San Andreas 2 until sometime in the middle of next year, following the news that his video game movie Rampage has been given a 2018 release date. San Andreas 2 doesn't have a date at this point, it will have to come later.
Are you excited for a third film in the Now You See Me franchise? Let us know in the comments.
