Granted, we’re not always fond of Morgan Freeman‘s career choices — “Dolphin Tale“? narrating every commercial ever? — but give the guy even a halfway decent script and he’ll kill it every time. Which makes us even more excited that he’s lining up a fantastic sounding project with a great array of talent to bounce against in the kind of role we don’t see often enough from the actor.
We never would have thought pairing the heist genre with magic, but that’s just what writer Boaz Yakin (”Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time,” “Fresh”) and newcomer Edward Ricourt are doing with “Now You See Me,” set to be directed by Louis Leterrier. With Jesse Eisenberg, Melanie Laurent, Mark Ruffalo and Amanda Seyfried already on board, the story follows a crack FBI squad in a game of cat-and-mouse against a super team of the world’s greatest illusionists, who pull off a series of daring bank heists during their performances and showers the profits on to their audiences. Interestingly, Freeman will play Thaddeus, an ex-magician who exposes the illusions of his colleagues and thus is a pariah in that community.
This will mark Leterrier’s first big step outside of tentpole/franchise filmmaking and it’s excitingly ambitious. He’s got a great group of actors on board and a very high profile concept to work with, so here’s hoping all the ingredients come together as they should. No start date has been announced just yet, but Summit Entertainment will be releasing the film and we’d guess late 2012 or early 2013 is a safe bet. [Variety]
