The ‘Now You See Me’ Franchise Explained in 10 Infographics
What if a team of super magicians used their talent and training to stage elaborate heists? That’s the high concept that drives the Now You See Me franchise. Critics were lukewarm when Now You See Me was released in 2013, categorizing the film as a heist flick with thin characters and a plot that fell apart as often as it twisted, but Now You See Me pulled off its own escape act—audiences loved the movie's flashy style, whipsaw pace, and all-star cast featuring names like Jesse Eisenberg, Mark Ruffalo, Woody Harrelson, and Morgan Freeman. The result was box office magic: a movie with a $75M budget that returned over $300M worldwide. Now You See Me has since grown into an internationally successful, long-term franchise for distributor Lionsgate: The third installment was released on Nov. 14, and a fourth Now You See Me film is already in development.
Like any long-running franchises, the Now You See Me-verse can be confusing, so we put together 10 infographics to pull back the curtain on Now You See Me's magic. First, a quick recap of each movie:
Now You See Me (2013): The initial entry in the series introduces us to the thieves/illusionists known as the “Four Horsemen.” These best-in-the-business magicians are recruited by a mysterious secret society called The Eye to pull off large-scale heists in front of live audiences, then distribute the money to the needy.
Now You See Me 2 (2016): The sequel expands the world of the first film, with bigger heists, deeper secrets, and funnier jokes. Having gone into hiding at the end of Now You See Me, The Horsemen resurface a year later and are coerced into a global heist by a tech mogul trying to steal all the privacy in the world.
Now You See Me: Now You Don't (2025): Set a decade after the last film, Now You See Me: Now You Don't features all five Horsemen teaming up with three cocky young criminals/illusionists to pull off their most audacious caper yet: the theft of the world's most valuable diamond.
The real-life magicians behind The Horsemen
The Now You See Me movies present stage magic in a semi-realistic (though highly stylized) way. To nail the realism, the films draw inspiration from some of the greatest magicians in history, including:
David Copperfield: The Horsemen’s larger-than-life illusions/heists like stealing the contents of a bank vault while performing a Vegas show seem inspired by the feats of magician David Copperfield, whose magical feats include flying over the Grand Canyon and vanishing the Statue of Liberty.
David Blaine: Street magician David Blaine’s shadow is all over the Now You See Me Movies. Without the popularity of Blaine’s modern, gritty take on magic, the Now You See Me movies would likely not exist.
Harry Houdini: Anything about stage magic is ultimately inspired by Houdini, the greatest magician of all time. Houdini's daring escape tricks inspired the series’ inciting incident, the death of magician Lionel Shrike, as well as the opening set piece where Henley Reeves escapes a water tank.
Andrei Jikh: Jikh’s cardistry skills are evident in all the Horsemen, particularly in Jack Wilder. Jikh served as a consultant on Now You See Me.
Keith Barry: Another Now You See Me magic consultant, Irish mentalist Keith Barry pioneered and popularized many of the hypnosis and mentalism feats used by character Merritt McKinney.
The Horsemen's greatest heists
The Horsemen are known as much for their larceny as their skills at illusion. Below are their most memorable heists, hold-ups, schemes, and burglaries.
The Paris-to-Vegas bank robbery
In the caper that introduces us to the Horsemen, the magicians rob a bank in Paris while performing before a crowd in Vegas. They choose a seemingly random person from the crowd and tell him he’s going to rob his own bank, the Crédit Républicain de Paris. Then they appear to teleport him to France, where he breaks into a bank vault, hits a button on a vacuum machine, and the money is seemingly sucked from Paris to Vegas where it rains down on the audience.
The Tressler Insurance heist
At a show in New Orleans, the Horsemen introduce their benefactor, insurance magnate Arthur Tressler, then proceed to drain his personal bank account while they’re onstage, depositing the money in the accounts of audience members, who all turn out to be victims of Hurricane Katrina that Tressler’s insurance company stiffed on repayments.
The Macau data chip theft
In Now You See Me 2, The Horsemen are coerced by evil tech magnate Walter Mabry to steal a cutting-edge computer chip that can decrypt and expose every system in the world. Housed in a highly secure research facility in Macau, China, the chip is conveniently the size of a playing card, allowing the Horsemen to use cardistry and sleight-of-hand skills to remove it from the building while being searched by guards.
The Magic Castle: the real-life Château de Roussillon
In Now You See Me Now You Don't, the Château de Roussillon is an ultimate magician's playground. The Eye's headquarters in a mansion in the French countryside is decked out with mind-bending large-scale illusions like rotating rooms and halls of mirrors. The Château de Roussillon is a real castle, but the filmmakers used Nádasdy Castle for the exterior shots in the movie. A main inspiration for the building is a real place: Los Angeles' Magic Castle.
Opened in 1963, the Magic Castle is a restaurant/club/clubhouse for magicians housed in a stately Victorian mansion overlooking Hollywood. Not only is The Magic Castle credited as magic consultants on Now You See Me: Now You Don't, much of the cast trained at the Castle to prepare for their roles.
If you'd like to visit, it won't be easy: The Magic Castle is an invitation-only private club, so you have to be a member of the Academy of Magical Arts or be invited by a member. But if you aren't friends with a magician, you can book a night at the nearby Magic Castle Hotel, where a stay comes with an invitation to the Castle.
“How do they do that?”
I analyzed the tricks in the movies with professional magician Dave Cox, and as over the top as the Horsemen's heists are, all but two of the many magic tricks presented in the Now You See Me movies could technically be done in real life—but the word “technically” is doing a lot of work here. The tricks are possible within the context of a stylized blockbuster, but would be extremely unlikely to work as well in real life: an extended, impromptu cardistry routine involving four magicians passing a playing card between themselves while security guards thoroughly search them makes for exciting cinema, but almost definitely wouldn’t go that smoothly in reality.
But, here is how three of the most iconic tricks from the franchise could be done in real life.
How to do Atlas’s “riffle force” card trick
Now You See Me opens with a unique piece of cinematic trickery. Street magician J. Daniel Atlas is performing for a crowd on a city street. He riffles quickly through a deck of cards and asks a spectator to “see one card.” When his subject has a card in mind, a nearby building is lit up revealing a giant seven of diamonds, the card the subject was thinking of.
It’s amazing if you’re “playing along at home,” because the chances are very good that you chose the seven of diamonds too. The trick is done in real life the same way it’s done in the movies: The magician uses sleight of hand or a gimmicked deck to pause on the desired card imperceptibly longer than the other cards. The director of Now You See Me added a frame or two to “pause” on the seven of diamonds, making it more likely that you think of that card.
How Jack Wilder throws cards as weapons
While it’s probably not possible to throw a card as accurately or forcefully as the characters in Now You See Me, you can throw playing cards really fast with the right technique and a lot of practice.
How Henley Reeves escaped the water tank
Henley Reeves’ introduction is a trick where she escapes from a water tank filled with piranhas, a variation of the kind of classic escape artist illusions popularized by Houdini. Water escapes are dangerous, but not as dangerous as they might seem because they’re rigged—no sane person is really going to try to escape from handcuffs and chains while underwater.
Real-life heists that seem right out of the Now You See Me movies
A group of thieves publicly “performing” large-scale robberies is strictly Hollywood, but the three real-life crimes below share some of the showmanship and audacity of the Horsemen’s heists:
Louvre heist (2025): A recent jewelry-jacking at the Louvre involved a highly professional and brazen plan executed in broad daylight. The thieves used a truck-mounted mechanical lift to break into a second-floor balcony window and were in and out in less than eight minutes. The robbers have all been caught, but won't say where the jewels are.
Stockholm helicopter robbery (2009): This thrilling heist involved a gang using a stolen police helicopter to land on the roof of a G4S cash management service building in the Stockholm suburb of Västberga. The brazen thieves smashed through a skylight, lowered themselves into the building, and stole millions while police were stymied by fake bombs placed near the police helicopter. Seven men were sentenced to prison, but authorities suspect as many as ten more people may have gotten away with the crime, and the 39 million Swedish krona loot was never recovered.
Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum heist (1990): This heist involved two men who disguised themselves as Boston police officers to gain entry into the museum just before it opened. The pair convinced one security guard to let them in, then handcuffed the rest of the guards and stole 13 priceless works of art valued at over $500 million. Despite a $10 million dollar reward, the art has never been recovered and no one has been charged with the crime.
Seven more movies for fans of Now You See Me
If you’ve watched all three NYSM movies and you’re still craving magical entertainment, check out these seven, all-killer no-filler movies about magic and magicians:
The Prestige (2006): The Prestige is set in the late 19th century, before you could just google how any magic trick was done. Back then, the secret of sawing a lady in half was closely guarded, and The Prestige’s rival magicians–played by Hugh Jackman and Christian Bale–will go to any length to keep the hidden knowledge of their craft.
The Illusionist (2010): This animated, silent feature provides a complete contrast to the Now You See Me movies. There’s no glitz or flash, just a quietly devastating character study of a magician’s relationship with the last person in his world who still believes in magic. Adapted from a screenplay by French cinema legend Jacques Tati, The Illusionist tells its intimate story through the evocative animation of Sylvain Chomet. It will definitely make you cry.
The Incredible Burt Wonderstone (2013): The Now You See Me movies go to great lengths to deny it, but magic is cheesy and magicians are weirdoes. Burt Wonderstone leans into the goofiness by casting Steve Carell and Steve Buscemi as Burt Wonderstone and Anton Marvelson, past-their-prime Vegas magicians bedeviled by Jim Carrey's Steve Gray, a Criss Angel-esque magic man who’s a different flavor of cheesy.
The Magician (1958): Max von Sydow plays the title character in The Magician, where everything is shot in black-and-white and no one gets away with a bunch of money or engages in any witty banter.
The Illusionist (2006): Yes, I’m recommending two movies with the same title. 2006’s The Illusionist is a moody, slow-burn mystery/romance that’s tonally a world away from Now You See Me’s glitz, but both films share a love of clever misdirection, intricate magic, “woah” reveals, and head-spinning plot twists. If you like the “magic as a means of social justice” theme of NYSM, you’ll like The Illusionist.
The Sorcerer’s Apprentice (2010): The Sorcerer’s Apprentice stars Nicolas Cage, who brings his own magic to every role, as a bonafide sorcerer who lives in modern New York City and fights a lonely war against dark magic on behalf of all mankind. Jay Baruchel plays his apprentice, and the pair use magical spells to battle a rival sorcerer.
Sleight (2016): This scrappy, low-budget flick provides a very different vision of an illusionist turning to crime. Jacob Latimore plays a young street magician who’s left to care for his sister after their parents die. Magic isn’t paying the bills, so he turns to drug dealing, and must use his skills at deception and sleight-of-hand to stay alive.