Ever seen a Formula One car driving in front of a baqala? Ruben Fleischer hadn’t either. But on an early scouting trip to Yas Marina Circuit, as the Now You See Me: Now You Don’t director was imagining how Abu Dhabi might shape the film, an idea occurred to him: what if they took one of these cars off the track and into the city's streets for a chase sequence?
He expected a “no." But instead of hesitation, the answer came back immediately: “yes”.
“It wasn’t scripted that way,” Fleischer says. “In the script, one of the characters performs a distraction within the track and does a burnout so everyone turns.
“But I thought to myself, I've seen 1,000 car chases, but I've never seen an actual F1 car on the streets. I was like: 'Can we?' And they were like: 'Sure.'”
It was the first sign that Abu Dhabi wouldn’t just host the film’s third act – it would elevate it. Fleischer and his team had arrived expecting limitations, the usual logistical barriers that come with large-scale action filmmaking. Instead, they found the opposite.
“We kept asking for things expecting to encounter a no,” he says. “But all along the way, it was just yeses. Can we shut down this bridge? Can we shut down this road? Can we shoot in this spectacular museum?”
That “spectacular museum” was Louvre Abu Dhabi, which Fleischer had identified early as a potential centrepiece, but hadn’t fully imagined until he stood beneath its storied dome.
It was a location that would end up defining the finale of Now You See Me: Now You Don't, which opens in UAE cinemas on Thursday.
“The Louvre is such an incredible setting – genuinely a dream come true,” he says. “There’s a stage in the middle of the water, and it has this built-in amphitheatre feel that's three-quarters surrounding the central stage.”
The team expanded that platform to give the production the space it needed, but the venue itself did most of the work.
“I don’t know that I’ve experienced a performance space quite like it,” Fleischer says. “It just felt like such an astounding venue for a magic show, especially once you add in the lights.”
The team expanded the stage and built the Horsemen’s final performance around the architecture itself. The director points to one moment in particular – a drone shot that flies in and makes a full 360 around the stage – as a way of showing off Louvre Abu Dhabi to audiences before the show begins.
The location didn’t just shape the action – it shaped the magic. From the moment he boarded the project, Fleischer was determined that the tricks would feel as close to live performance as possible.
“I approached this movie as a huge fan of magic,” he says. “As much as possible, we captured the magic without cuts, without too much manipulation.”
He wanted audiences to feel the same charge he gets watching sleight of hand performed in real time. That meant designing sequences in spaces that allowed for long takes, uninterrupted sight-lines and physical depth – a reason Abu Dhabi’s architecture became central rather than decorative.
In practice, that meant working out illusions on location rather than creating them later digitally – a choice that connected the film’s design directly to the city around it.
That connection extended behind the camera, too. During one of the early walkthroughs beneath the Louvre’s dome, Fleischer paused and realised the production had drawn together filmmakers from more than 50 countries.
“Part of the joy of experiencing the UAE was getting to meet so many people – some from the UAE, others from across the Middle East, some from Europe,” says Fleischer. “To bring together that talent and work with them, whether it was people from the film office, crew members or the production service company, was exciting to me.”
For him, it became a defining feature of the shoot – a reminder that filmmaking is fundamentally collective. “Filmmaking is something you can’t do by yourself,” he says. “Somebody once said, if you want to do it all by yourself, go be a painter. Because you just can’t make a movie without a lot of people.”
The enthusiasm extended to every level of the production. The support from Creative Media Authority, Abu Dhabi Film Commission, Miral Destinations, the local crew and the city’s institutions created an environment Fleischer describes as unusually open and collaborative. “They couldn’t have made it easier for us,” he says.
“Abu Dhabi is among the most exciting and spectacular cities being built. We were so pleased they were leaning in to partner with us and allowing us access to these incredible locations,” Fleischer continues.
Most of the Abu Dhabi shoot took place at night. Every major sequence – the racetrack, the desert, the museum – was staged after sundown, with the cast and crew wrapping just as the first light crept across the water. The rhythm made them feel, as Fleischer puts it, “like vampires”, awake only when the rest of the city slept.
But that schedule also gave him his most vivid memory of the production.
“One morning after wrapping, it was like 5am, and we all got back to the hotel, which was situated right on the Arabian Gulf,” he says. “After a long day of filming, me and the cast all went into the sea.”
The water was calm, the horizon starting to glow.
“We were just floating in the clear waters, watching the sun come up over our hotel,” he says. “And then we all went off to bed to shoot another day.”
For a film built on spectacle, scale and sleight of hand, it was this quietest of moments that stayed with him.
And for Fleischer, it became the perfect encapsulation of why Abu Dhabi shaped the movie so completely. It felt like a dream – but here, if he dreamt it, he could do it.
Now You See Me: Now You Don't opens in UAE cinemas on Thursday
