Now You See Me must’ve been director Louis Leterrier‘s way of cleansing his palate. He’s coming off Clash of the Titans, a movie’s which problems were well covered upon its release. That hokey 3D conversion aside, it’s a film Leterrier doesn’t sound exceedingly pleased with. He’s not ashamed, as he points out in our chat, but the final product isn’t a representation of who he is as a filmmaker: someone who wants to make adventure movies, not “action” movies. Now You See Me is more in tune with Leterrier’s interests. It’s a movie that doesn’t rely solely on set pieces, but rather the charm of its cast and the strength of the script. If there’s a dull spot, a big ‘ol Kraken or a heavily bearded Liam Neeson can’t show up to provide the missing energy. It has to always be there for this type of movie to work. Good thing Leterrier’s movie is chalk full of actors who can make IKEA directions sound exciting. Speaking of excited, that’s something Leterrier certainly was in our extended chat with the man. If you want to know why he never needs to own a suit, read ahead.

2013′s summer movie season will likely go down as one of the biggest and be remembered for Iron Man 3‘s record-breaking box office, but there’s an unfortunate common theme developing here too. From Marvel’s film to Star Trek Into Darkness to the latest installment of the Fast & Furious franchise, this summer’s big studio releases appear to have given up even the pretense of intelligence in exchange for plain, dumb fun. That’s not a bad thing on it’s own, and to be clear, this isn’t an issue of believability as much as it is about shameless, lazy stupidity. Louis Leterrier‘s new film, Now You See Me, gleefully jumps into the fray hoping to skate by on the same “dumb but fun” mentality, but while the three movies above featured spectacular action set-pieces and big stunts to distract from their half-assed scripts this one instead has… magic tricks?

While 3D films (and those viscous little post-converted jobs) seem old hat nowadays, it was only a few short years ago that 3D wasn’t the standard mode of presentation for cinema’s biggest blockbusters. After Avatar, 3D was suddenly hip again and, more importantly, one hell of a moneymaker, which was why director Louis Leterrier‘s Clash of the Titans was famously post-converted to 3D to even more famously terrible results. The director has moved on from the bashing that his Clash took, but while chatting about his latest film, the magicians-gone-wild feature Now You See Me, the director still had plenty to say about the “gimmick” of 3D. Basically, Leterrier hates it, hates the practice of it, and doesn’t want to do it his audiences ever again. Point to Leterrier. In an interview with Mike Ryan over at The Huffington Post, Leterrier was incredibly candid when it came time to chatting about Clash, telling the outlet: It was a very tough experience. I was literally thrown under the bus…but at one point it was like, ‘Yeah, Louis chose the 3D.’ And I was like, ‘No, guys, I didn’t choose the 3D. I actually told you it’s not working. I couldn’t control it. I said don’t do it.’” The filmmaker continued on: “It was famously rushed and famously horrible. It was absolutely horrible, the 3D. Nothing was working, it was just a gimmick to steal money from the audience. I’m a good boy and I rolled with the punches and everything, but it’s not my movie. Clash of the Titans is not my

Seeing as it’s a Louis Leterrier movie, of course the first trailer for Now You See Me is high energy and loud. Jesse Eisenberg is yelling into a microphone, people are disappearing with flashes of electricity, Isla Fisher’s smile is blinding you, and the contents of a bank’s vault are raining down on a jacked up theater audience. And this is all before the action starts. Then you gets showdowns and chase scenes, Morgan Freeman and Michael Caine trading dialogue about grizzled old man doom and gloom, and Mark Ruffalo looking like he’s right in his wheelhouse playing a frazzled and out of sorts police inspector trying to keep up with a team of ultra-competent, bank robbing magicians. Sounds like this movie has something for everyone, no? Check it out after the break, and let us know what you think.

Heist movies are usually about that one big score. That one massive job that’s too risky to take on, but too enticing to pass up. In order to motivate heist movie characters to step out of their comfort zones and take big risks, whatever they’re breaking into has to have a pretty big booty. But with each passing announcement, it becomes clearer and clearer that in Louis Leterrier’s upcoming heist film Now You See Me, the most valuable thing on screen won’t be the stockpiles of cash the illusionist characters steal from the world’s banks, but the amazing cast that he has assembled to bring these characters to life. It seems like almost on a bi-weekly basis some new casting announcement is made about this film that tops the last, and the latest comes from Movie Hole, who reports that Michael Caine has become the latest actor to join an already bursting at the seams ensemble. This puts him in a group of actors including Jesse Eisenberg, Mark Ruffalo, Morgan Freeman, Melanie Laurent, Isla Fisher, Dave Franco, and Woody Harrelson. Admittedly, Movie Hole’s accuracy rate at breaking news stories has been a little bit dubious, but The Playlist, a publication with a better batting record, has confirmed the story as well, so there must be some legitimacy to what Movie Hole’s secret source is saying. And if Movie Hole’s source knows what it’s talking about, then it raises another question about the film. Their source mentions the fact that Woody

The casting process for Louis Leterrier’s upcoming heist film Now You See Me has played like a magician’s stage show up to this point. One after another, Leterrier has pulled actors I love out of his hat to fill the roles of the bank robber magicians and the government agents who will be tracking them down. But recently that process has hit something of a snag. The genie has been taken out of the bottle, because Variety is reporting that Amanda Seyfried has passed on playing the role of Henley, the master technician of the magician crew. For her sake, I hope that she isn’t passing up on this interesting sounding film to do yet another terrible movie like Red Riding Hood, but I guess we both need to just move on. Breaking up is hard. Moving on might be kind of easy though, as that same Variety article is also reporting that now that Seyfried is done sniffing around the role, the next step to finding a gadget gal for Jesse Eisenberg and his crew of bank robbing illusionists is to negotiate with Isla Fisher for the role. Fisher is charming, funny, and nice to look at, plus she doesn’t do nearly enough live action stuff, so I approve of this decision. That loss of Seyfried is going to hurt, I’m not gonna lie, but sticking a bubbly redhead in her place is a damn good way to make up for it. And more good news is that Mark

I’m starting to feel a pretty strange connection to Louis Leterrier‘s upcoming heist movie Now You See Me. First he seemed to be practically reading my mind by casting all of my favorite actors in prominent roles. And now, just days after I randomly and nonsensically mentioned Morgan Freeman in an article reporting on Mark Ruffalo and Amanda Seyfried joining the cast, comes word that Leterrier is negotiating with Freeman to join the film as well. Hello? Louis? Are you in there? Can you hear my thoughts? Let’s run down the cast once more, and see where Freeman fits in. Jesse Eisenberg is set to play the leader of a group of magicians (now being referred to as “the Four Horsemen” in the Variety article) who use their powers of illusion to rob banks and then shower the audience at their magic shows with money. Mark Ruffalo will play the head F.B.I. dude intent on shutting their little crime ring down. Amanda Seyfried will be playing the technician that builds all of the magicians’ equipment. And Melanie Laurent is set to play a lead character who sits on the right side of the law.

Louis Leterrier seems to be intent on pulling off the greatest magic trick of all time: getting all of my favorite young actors to appear in the same film. A movie about illusionists turned bank robbers playing a game of cat and mouse with the F.B.I. is interesting enough just as a pitch, but every new name he adds to the Now You See Me cast ends up making me more and more excited to see the end product. First he snagged Jesse Eisenberg to play the lead role. Eisenberg is an actor that started turning heads with The Squid and the Whale and then just kept turning in constantly solid work until finally achieving mainstream acclaim with his turn as Mark Zuckerberg in The Social Network. Any notion of him being the other Michael Cera has been long disproven. After getting a leading man, Leterrier needed an equally charming leading lady so he went after French actress Melanie Laurent. She, of course, is the feisty little philly who blew everyone (including important Nazi officials) away as Shoshanna in Tarantino’s Inglorious Basterds. That’s quite a pair already.

A while back I first heard that Louis Leterrier’s next project was going to be a heist movie about magicians who robbed banks. It was an interesting enough concept to pique my interest, but I still had a bad taste left in my mouth after Clash of the Titans. I guess enough time must have passed, because hearing about the project again, I don’t find much of that ill will still remaining. I think I’m kind of looking forward to this next movie. It just might be a new day for Leterrier and me. Or maybe I’m just happy that the new news about the film is that Melanie Laurent is in negotiations to play the female lead. I do so crush on that little pixie-like lady. You know who she is, right? The girl from Inglorious Basterds and Beginners? Yeah, she’s fun. Jake Gyllenhaal was also pondering the idea of joining the cast for a while, but seems to have passed for one reason or another. But that doesn’t break my heart much, because Jesse Eisenberg is still set to star. After his recent string of awesome films I’d say that I’ve developed a little bit of a man-crush on the Eisenberg, so if Leterrier manages to score Laurent he will be 2 for 2 with me. Eisenberg, Laurent, in a movie about the FBI tracking down bank robber magicians? Yeah, I’m down with that. Clash of the Titans who? [Variety]

Louis Leterrier gets a bad rap in this world where your latest work is all that matters. He’s never been a groundbreaker, but the Transporter flicks were a lot of action-y fun, and he improved on the big green menace known as Hulk even with a ton of production trouble. None of that makes up for Clash of the Titans or the ophthalmology bills its 3D caused, but his next two projects sound pretty solid. We already knew about Now You See Me which sees the world of bank heists meeting the world of trick-doers magicians illusionists. Now, according to Heat Vision, Leterrier will be directing the sci-fi thriller G which features a father trying to track down his son in a world that’s stop spinning and has no gravity. A quick science digression: those two elements may not be related, but if the movie explains that the earth’s ceasing to spin is what caused the lack of gravity, foreheads will meet palms, and there will be a new movie for NASA to complain about. Producer Guymon Casady (The Expendables) is responsible for the high concept, and the production is currently looking for a screenwriter. No word yet on whether the movie will feature a McDonald’s tie-in called the McG.

What is Movie News After Dark? This is a question that I am almost never asked, but I will answer it for you anyway. Movie News After Dark is FSR’s newest late-night secretion, a column dedicated to all of the news stories that slip past our daytime editorial staff and make it into my curiously chubby RSS ‘flagged’ box. It will (but is not guaranteed to) include relevant movie news, links to insightful commentary and other film-related shenanigans. I may also throw in a link to something TV-related here or there. It will also serve as my place of record for being both charming and sharp-witted, but most likely I will be neither of the two. I write this stuff late at night, what do you expect?

Louis Leterrier started his directing career off strong. Most people found his films The Transporter and Transporter 2 to be fun action romps that came out of nowhere and took Jason Statham’s career to the next level. Then he made The Hulk, which got mixed reactions, but everyone seemed to agree it was a step in the right direction after Ang Lee’s mess of a take on the character. This was the “now you see me” part of Leterrier’s career. Then he made Clash of the Titans. I haven’t heard anybody say a good thing about it yet. As a matter of fact, that film has sort of become the poster child both for lame 3D conversions and the mediocrity of last summer’s blockbuster season. If Leterrier doesn’t follow that stinker up with something that people respond better to, he may just be entering the “now you don’t” phase of his career. Well, we’ve now got word of what that follow-up will be. Leterrier has signed on to make Now You See Me for Summit Entertainment. The film is described as a cat and mouse game between a crack team of FBI agents and a team of bank robbers made up of the world’s greatest illusionists. The robbers apparently perform these heists during their shows and then shower the money on their audiences.

Fantastic Voyage is going to be huge. There’s no word yet on whether James Cameron is building a special ship to go inside the human body for production design research, but the promise of a massive budget should take the 1966 sci-fi flick into the big leagues of action not seen since the “Disney Body Wars” attraction. In order to deliver that, Cameron apparently wants Clash of the Titans director Louis Leterrier to take the reigns on the project – which is all but ready to roll in 2011 with a near-finished script (from Armageddon and Alien vs Predator: Requiem writer Shane Salerno) and heavy design work from Cameron’s Avatar team. Instead of calling up the production designers on Honey I Shrunk the Kids, they’ll be going totally CGI once the team is inside the body. That prospect means that instead of re-casting Raquel Welch’s role, the least they could do is spend the money to digitally drop the younger version of her into the new movie. If they refuse, they should cast Christina Hendricks. [Deadline Tampa]

Are you one of those people who complained about the 3D conversion in the release of Clash of the Titans in theaters? You know those problems… blurred vision, headaches, eye strain. Well, if you want another chance to see Clash of the Titans in beautiful high definition, now’s your chance on Blu-ray. And if you play this drinking game, you just might get blurred vision, headaches and eye strain from a different source.

Matthew Vaughn might be the top choice for Fox, but they’ve got a list of talent a mile long. And by a mile, I mean there are six names on it.

This week, Fat Guy Kevin Carr damns the gods with reviews of Clash of the Titans, The Last Song and Why Did I Get Married Too?

Remaking a beloved classic such as the 1981 fantasy epic Clash of the Titans is no small task. It doesn’t help when your story is poorly put together and your film has been retroactively rendered in infuriatingly poor 3D. That said, Louis Leterrier did his best, I suppose.

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Rumors are circulating again that an adaptation of Brian K. Vaughan’s stellar comic book Y: The Last Man is not completely, totally, absolutely dead. In fact, if those whispers are to be believed, Louis Leterrier himself is interested in resurrecting the recently dead project. With that optimism on the line, I’d like to politely offer 7 things for the filmmakers to think about while tackling the best graphic novel that Stephen King has ever read.

For some time now, the D.J. Caruso led adaptation of Brian K. Vaughn’s excellent graphic novel Y: The Last Man has been thought to be dead. It was set up last year by David S. Goyer over at New Line, but the studio has since chosen to go a new direction with their release slate, choosing to focus on films such as Sex and the City 2 instead. Now we’re getting an update, and Y may be getting some new life.