Sam Raimi and Roy Lee are teaming up with Lionsgate for some horror magic.
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 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 starred 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 own 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. The movie generated buzz before its release by 2-20th Century 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 Magic’s reimagining. Sullivan, a longtime devotee of the original, has been with the remake from its inception.
Hammond, who produced the 2003 crime movie Shade that had Jamie Foxx and Sylvester Stallone in its cast, is currently producing Reykjavik with Jeff Daniels, Jared Harris, and J.K. Simmons. Sullivan is described as a longtime film devotee; he has been with the remake from its inception and worked for years to bring Goldman’s story back to the screen.
Lee produced Zach Cregger’s Weapons, which has dominated the August box office. The horror movie has grossed over $236.7 million worldwide on a $40 million budget. Lee recently boarded in Lionsgate’s adaptation of Stephen King story The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon and has the company’s King adaptation The Long Walk opening in theaters Sept. 12.
Raimi’s next movie outing is Send Help, 20th Century Studios’ upcoming survival horror thriller starring Rachel McAdams and Dylan O’Brien, and which was written by Swift and Shannon.
Raimi is repped by repped by CAA and Hansen Jacobson while Swift and Shannon are repped by UTA and McKuin Frankel.