A weekly film and box office newsletter. Howdy, folks! Who saw "Now You See Me 3" topping the box office this weekend? My wife, that's who. Women made up 54% of all tickets sold for "Now You See Me: Now You Don't," which won the box office with $21.3 million this weekend, topping Glen Powell's sci-fi actioner "The Running Man." While many were surprised by the performance of the Lionsgate heist film, I'd wager that if you ask the women in your life what they think about this franchise, they'll tell you they love these movies. My wife's been clamoring to see it for weeks. There's something about this series — they're not particularly star-driven, they don't have the finesse of the "Ocean's" films and they're not packed with CG spectacle. But there's an X-factor there that fueled this to a No. 1 opening and a $75.5 million global launch. I'm told Lionsgate knew this franchise had a lot of goodwill and sparked to director Ruben Fleischer's pitch for a third film, even though it'd been dormant for a decade. And they liked the dailies of "NYSM 3" so much that they tapped the "Zombieland" filmmaker early to develop a fourth movie in the franchise, which is already deep in development. Key to Fleischer's vision was keeping what fans love while executing for a price ($90 million) — a lesson learned from Universal's ballooning cost of the "Fast & Furious" franchise. And women will likely continue to fuel the box office this coming weekend with the highly anticipated launch of "Wicked: For Good." How high will the follow-up fly? Stay tuned. Adam Chitwood 
Box Office: 'Now You See Me 3' Tops the Charts in the Calm Before the 'Wicked' StormThe box office is in a holding pattern this weekend as theaters prepare for a big end-of-year surge starting with... 
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