Ashleigh Hill-Buxton
One of our more reliable tipsters tells us Michael Caine is in early talks for a role in director Louis Letterier’s criminal-magicians movie “Now You See Me” .
With Morgan Freeman already onboard, the Summit production is shaping up to be a bit of a Nolanverse “Batman” reunion. Caine, of course, plays Alfred in the current crop of “Batman” movies, while Freeman plays Lucius Fox.
The movie, produced by the blockbuster dream team Alex Kurtzman, Roberto Orci and Bobby Cohen, tells of four of the globe’s best magicians teaming up to pull off some seemingly impossible heists; the money they snag go to their audience members who, obviously, can’t get enough. The authorities are hot on their tail, but the illusionists have enough tricks in their bag to remain one step ahead.
Our scooper says :
Offer has gone out but “Now You See Me” isn’t planned to shoot until January 16, 2012 – it goes to March 26, 2012 in New Orleans, with some shooting in New York also planned – so it won’t be official for a bit.
This is going to be a great movie, guys. These guys literally get around robbing all the major cities – the one in the third act, in Los Angeles, will be major – without the feds ever being able to place them on the scene. The opening sequence will be great – ‘The Four Horsemen’, the world’s best illusionists, are at one of their live shows. They bring an audience member up who recently lost some money from a Paris bank. Next thing you know, the audience member and the lead illusionist, Michael (Eisenberg), appear on a videoscreen behind them – IN the bank in Paris. They crack open the vaults. Next thing, cash is raining through the auditorium. The feds – led by agent Hobbes, played by Woody H – get wind of what happened at the magic show and confirm with the bank in Paris that they’ve been robbed. Of course, the authorites have no idea how the illusionists managed to rob a bank on the other side of the world while they were standing on a theater stage in the states. They ultimately enlist the help of a veteran illusionist who taught Michael everything he knows. You can guess the rest, but it’s just such a good story.
No idea who Caine is playing, but it’d be fun to see him playing one of the illusionists – the ageing magic-man of the bunch, right? (He played the same sort of part in Christopher Nolan’s “The Prestige”) or maybe the veteran who teams with the feds to catch the ‘Horsemen’?
Jesse Eisenberg, Woody Harrelson, Mark Ruffalo, Mélanie Laurent, Isla Fisher and Dave Franco star in the picture.
I have a feeling this is going to be one of 2013’s highights – that cast, with Eisenberg, Ruffalo, Freeman, Harrelson and now Caine; Orci and Kurtzman producing (these guys make great films – “Star Trek”, “Transformers” etc), and Louis Letterier, who did the “Incredible Hulk” movie from a few years back and proved with that that he knows how to make a fun, fast-paced blockbuster.
