"Magic" Remake in Works

Lionsgate is developing a remake of "Magic", a 1978 cult horror classic that featured Anthony Hopkins as a mentally unstable ventriloquist. 

The reimagining will be produced by Sam Raimi, the creator of the Evil Dead franchise, and Roy Lee, the prolific scary movie maker behind the summer hit "Weapons".

Mark Swift and Damian Shannon, veteran scribes who previously penned Freddy vs. Jason and the remake of Friday the 13th, will write the script.

"Magic" featured Hopkins as Corky, a magician who reaches fame alongside his ventriloquist’s dummy, the obnoxious and wisecracking Fats. 

Faced with the prospect of signing a network deal for his show, but afraid of revealing his fragile mental state, the magician takes off for the Catskills, where he tries to reconnect with a high school love, even as Fats begins to murderously take control of the situation.

The movie also starred Ann-Margret and Burgess Meredith, was directed by Richard Attenborough, and was written by William Goldman, based on his novel.

"Magic" generated buzz before its release by 20th Century Fox with a TV ad that focused just on the face of the dummy, which declared “Magic is fun, we’re dead.”

Chris Hammond and Tim Sullivan, who have long championed the project and guided its development, will produce alongside Raimi and Lee. Raimi Productions’ Zainab Azizi will also produce.

Executive producers are Paul Fishkin as well as Vertigo’s Andrew Childs.

Lionsgate, Hammond, and Sullivan spent considerable time tracking down and bringing together the rights holders of the original film, the surviving producers among them, to pave the way for the reimagining.