Now You See Me: Now You Don’t, the third film in the Now You See Me franchise, is a jet-setting adventure flick that takes its characters from New York and Belgium to France and Abu Dhabi. “I wanted to hit those same notes of the previous films, where it's a travelogue,” director Ruben Fleischer says. “And since I'm going to these amazing places, I'm going to try to feature as beautiful and cinematic locations as I can possibly find. When you're doing bank heisting magicians, you want to elevate it as much as possible.”
The majority of the production took place in Hungary, primarily in Budapest, in the summer of 2024. Although it was first selected due to budgetary reasons, Hungary offered a lot of compelling locations and great craftsman to build additional sets on soundstages. “Once we realized that we were shooting in Hungary, we specifically scripted things to take place in Europe,” Fleischer says. “Originally, the first act was more New York-based. Instead of trying to create New York in Budapest, we decided to lean into the Europe of it all.”
Now You See Me: Now You Don’t not only reunites the original Four Horsemen, a group of renegade magicians (played by Jesse Eisenberg, Woody Harrelson, Isla Fisher, and Dave Franco), but also introduces new characters into the mix. A group of young, budding magicians—Justice Smith’s Charlie, Dominic Sessa’s Bosco and Ariana Greenblatt’s June—team up with the old hats to steal the Heart Diamond from tycoon Veronika Vanderberg (Rosamund Pike). The adventure takes them around the world, eventually ending up in Abu Dhabi.
“We wanted a big third act and I wanted an escalation from the prior two films,” Fleischer says. “So if the action started in New York and went to old-world Europe, how could we contrast that? What was really modern city? They went to Asia in the last one. We thought that Abu Dhabi nicely contrasted where we had already been in this film.” Here Fleischer breaks down the key locations in Now You See Me: Now You Don’t.
South Africa
The Vanderberg family diamond mine is located in South Africa, however the production created the mine in a quarry outside Budapest. “We built Veronika’s glass structure from scratch and then put it deep into the quarry,” Fleischer says. “Then with visual effects, we made it seem higher. The quarry was only four levels, but we extended it to around six or eight levels so that it had more height behind her in the shots.”
New York City
The Four Horsemen appear to reemerge in a New York City warehouse during a reunion magic show, although it’s actually Charlie, Bosco, and June doing a neat trick. The scene was shot in a neighborhood of Budapest called Csepel. “It was a really cool environment that resembled New York,” Fleischer says. “It was just some random warehouse that we built that set in. We made it feel like it was an old factory with cement, and we built a proscenium for the stage.”
After the show, the young magicians return to their loft apartment, also in New York City. That scene was filmed in Toronto during the film’s reshoots because Daniel originally was meant to first encounter the trio in a karaoke bar. “When we're doing our reshoots, we decided to put it in their apartment because it gave them a bit more of an introduction,” Fleischer notes.
Antwerp, Belgium
Although a pivotal sequence takes place in Antwerp, the production only spent three days filming in the Belgian city. Exteriors were shot in Grote Markt and Central Station, while the majority of the action was captured in Budapest using a variety of real-world locations. The party scene, where the Horsemen heist the Heart Diamond from Veronika, was primarily filmed in the central hall of the Museum of Fine Arts in Budapest. The Hungarian State Opera House stood in as the staircase entryway into the party and the former British Embassy, now abandoned, was used as the room where Veronika is photographed with the diamond.
“I wanted as much production value in the frame as I could,” Fleischer says. “What’s great about Hungary is they really give you the run of place. There weren’t many locations that said, ‘You can’t do that.’ For the Museum of Fine Arts, we brought in marble walls. We couldn’t move these ancient Roman pieces from the floor so we covered them with plastic boxes. Overall, I wanted as much scale as possible.”
After the Horsemen steal the diamond, Veronika’s security team chases them to the roof, where a helicopter is waiting. In a trick of the eye, the helicopter vanishes and the Horseman zip-line down to a waiting boat. The escape scene combined the roof of the Budapest University of Technology and Economics, an ornate building situated along the Danube River, and constructed sets.
“We had a boat parked where they came down to the the river and them landing on the boat was all real,” Fleischer says. “But the actual zip line we did against green screen in a parking lot. The boat sequence was shot on the actual Danube at night. There really is a river in Antwerp, although it’s a lot flatter there than Budapest, with less hills.”
Chateau de Roussillon, France
When the magicians head to France, they discover a mysterious countryside estate that is the former headquarters of The Eye. It’s filled with trick-of-the-eye rooms, but from the outside it appears to be an upscale French manor. The production used Nádasdy Castle in Hungary for the exterior and built the interiors on two stages at Stern Studios. One of sets was an Ames room, a distorted space that creates the illusion that people on one side are larger than those on the other. In order to correctly choreograph the stunts that would take place on that set, the team went to the Museum of Illusions Budapest.
“When the characters fight, they change size and scale,” Fleischer says. “I knew what an Ames room was, but I didn't really know exactly how the action could work so we went there before we built it.”
One room in the manor spins, so the team built the set into a giant contraption that could mechanically rotate. In another, mirrors cover the walls at specific angles, allowing up to 78 reflections to occur in one frame. The filmmakers created scale models of each room ahead of building the sets, and did a lot of tests to ensure everything created the right illusion. “Everything was really trippy,” Fleischer says. “We had one really cool build that didn’t make the final cut that was basically an optical illusion using convex and concave walls to trick you into thinking it looks deeper than it is.”
French Police Station
When Lula May (Lizzy Caplan) breaks Merritt out of a jail in rural France, the scenes actually take place in Szentendre, Hungary. The town, located outside of Budapest on the Danube River, is a popular tourist attraction. It was used for the exterior of the police station. The interior were filmed in an closed-down local museum, although the jail cells were additions. “Szentendre is this really charming Medieval village that’s only about a half hour north of Budapest,” Fleischer says. “The museum had some rooms, but we built other rooms on it as well.”
Abi Dhabi
After wrapping in Europe, the production relocated to Abu Dhabi for three weeks of filming. They shot both in the city and in the nearby desert, where Dune: Part Two also happened to be working. “They did all their desert sand stuff there too,” Fleischer says. “I'd never experienced that degree of rolling sand.”
In the film, the Horsemen journey to Abu Dhabi during an F1 race, where Veronika is preparing to showcase her racing team. The track was a real one, located at the W Abu Dhabi Yas Island. The hotel is built over the track and the viewing bridge became Veronika’s suite, where she eventually captures the original Horsemen in a cage they have to escape. As they battle to free themselves (a scene that was done on a set), the younger magicians steal Veronika’s car.
“The driving scenes were done on the streets of Abu Dhabi, which was really cool,” Fleisher says. “Traditionally, F1 vehicles go on tracks and I had never seen a chase with an F1 car on the streets. The F1 storyline got integrated once we found this crazy W hotel. We were like, ‘Oh, she has a race team and that's why they have to go there.’ It was a bit of reverse engineering the story to fit the location.”
Of course, there is more to it than initially meets the eye. After things go haywire at the race track, Veronika believes she is being driven to the Vanderberg vault, located 40 stories under the desert of Abu Dhabi. There she has a final showdown with Charlie—a moment that has been faked by the Horsemen. The vault scene was shot in an abandoned gas silo in Hungary and production design added the replica of a stolen Caravaggio painting to one of the walls. “That supposedly was one of the most valuable paintings that has ever been stolen, so we put it in his vault as if there was illegal art stuff in there,” Fleisher notes.
Eventually, it is revealed to Veronika that it’s a trick. The climatic scene, a magic show put on by the Horseman, was filmed at the Louvre Abu Dhabi, in an outdoor space that spans an impressive water feature. The filmmakers added a stage to amp up the visual spectacle.
“We really wanted them to be on a stage for that final moment with the reveal,” Fleischer says. “If you think of the first movie, which is the the one that establishes them, they are Vegas-style stage magicians. We had the opening show in the warehouse, but then everything else is more heist-y and it's not as performative. Doing the scene in the Louvre gave us the most incredible cinematic location we could think of to stage a performance.”
He adds of using so many real places, “The locations contribute so much to the film and inform their journey. We are taking these kids from a shitty warehouse in Brooklyn on this whole adventure and by the end they’re on a magnificent stage in Abu Dhabi. It feels like they’ve graduated from small scale to big, international scale.”