While he didn’t land the gig directing the James Cameron produced 3D remake of “Fantastic Voyage” — the job has gone to Shawn Levy — Louis Leterrier hasn’t wasted any time in finding another project, and it’s a pretty intriguing high concept heist movie.
Leterrier has confirmed with The Playlist that he will direct “Now You See Me” for Summit Entertainment. Written by Boaz Yakin (“Prince Of Persia: Sands Of Time,” “Fresh“) and Edward Ricourt, the film 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. That certainly doesn’t sound like any heist film we’ve seen before, and as fans of the genre, our interest is piqued.
“It’s amazing. Only great people involved,” Leterrier told us about the project and he’s not joking. He’ll have the powerhouse duo of Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci behind him producing under their Kurtzman/Orci banner. Yakin and Bobby Cohen will executive produce.
You might also recall that last summer, Leterrier was also circling a zero-gravity thriller set up at Universal. Well, we spoke with the director recently and it’s still on his potential plate, but a bit of way off just yet.
“Now You See Me” is definitely a solid move by the filmmaker, one that will find him out of the run of sequels/comic franchises/remakes of his last few films, and tackling an original script. We know he’s excited for this one, we’d wager he might just surprise a few people.
