Dave Franco got candid about some of his best-known projects on Monday’s episode of “Hot Ones,” and while one high-concept film series may be among the biggest successes of his career, he initially thought it was going to be his downfall.
Host Sean Evans grilled the “Idiots” actor about work that he thought was going to flop that turned into a success, and Franco gave a moment of pause before answering with his full chest.
“I can talk about this because we’ve done three of them,” he reasoned. “The ‘Now You See Me’ series.”
Franco co-starred in the 2013 caper with Jesse Eisenberg, Isla Fisher, Common, Mark Ruffalo, Woody Harrelson and Morgan Freeman as Jack Wilder, a member of The Four Horsemen. The fictional magician group were vigilantes as well as entertainers, staging bank heists during their performances and rewarding their audiences with the money.
“Day one, this is magicians pulling off bank heists, right?” Franco said of the long-shot premise. “I remember at the end of the first day, it was such chaos trying to figure it out, that we all went out to dinner and we literally cheers’ed to the end of our careers. We thought this movie was going to take us down.”
Now, the first three films from the franchise (“Now You See Me” in 2013, “Now You See Me 2” in 2016 and “Now You See Me: Now You Don’t” in 2025) have grossed over $930 million at the global box office. A fourth film is already in development.
“Cut to 15 years later, we’ve done three of these things with a fourth coming,” Franco gushed.
“I’ve learned over the years to never have expectations,” the actor continued. “I know how hard it is to have a movie that hits and so when a movie does hit, it’s a nice surprise for me now. I go into every single release of one of my films being like, ‘I hope it does well, I’m going to push this as hard as I can, but who knows?’ It’s just letting go.”
The actor and producer’s latest, “Idiots,” a stoner comedy renamed from “The Shitheads” since its Sundance 2026 debut, hits theaters Friday.
