Sam Raimi to Direct ‘Magic’ Remake at Lionsgate

Sam Raimi is heading back into horror — and this time, he’s bringing a dummy with him. Lionsgate has set the Evil Dead and Spider-Man filmmaker to direct Magic, a modern adaptation of William Goldman’s novel that was first brought to the screen in 1978 with Anthony Hopkins in one of his most unsettling early performances.

The original film, directed by Richard Attenborough and scripted by Goldman from his own novel, starred Hopkins as Corky, a magician who rises to fame alongside his ventriloquist’s dummy, the obnoxious and wisecracking Fats. When Corky is on the verge of landing his own network television deal, he panics — terrified of exposing the fragile state of his mental health — and flees to the Catskills, where he tries to rekindle a high school romance. Fats, meanwhile, begins murderously taking control of the situation. The film also starred Ann-Margret and Burgess Meredith, and Hopkins’ performance was the kind of slow-burn, psychologically unraveling work that hinted at everything he’d later deliver in The Silence of the Lambs.

Raimi was already attached to produce the remake — he’d set it up at Lionsgate last year — but he’s now stepping into the director’s chair as well. Producing alongside him are Roy Lee (whose credits include It and the recent Weapons), Chris Hammond, and Tim Sullivan, the latter two having long championed the project and tracked down the original rights to get it off the ground. Raimi Productions’ Zainab Azizi will also produce. Nathan Kahane, Paul Fishkin, and Andrew Childs for Vertigo will executive produce. Meredith Wieck and Pavan Kalidindi are overseeing the project for Lionsgate.

“Sam is the dream director for this project — in fact, his coming aboard represents one of the truly great matches of director and material,” said Adam Fogelson, chair of Lionsgate Motion Picture Group. “The script is fantastic, and we could not be more excited to see Sam’s direction and creative vision take it to another level. We are absolutely thrilled he has chosen to direct the film.”

A Horror Dream Team Reunites

The script comes from Mark Swift and Damian Shannon, who are no strangers to the genre — they previously wrote Freddy vs. Jason and the 2009 Friday the 13th remake. More recently, they wrote Send Help for Raimi and Azizi, which makes this a full creative reunion for the team.

Send Help, Raimi’s twisty survival thriller released through 20th Century Studios/Disney earlier this year with Rachel McAdams and Dylan O’Brien, was a genuine box office success story — it topped the charts for two consecutive weekends and pulled in nearly $100 million worldwide. That momentum clearly gives Raimi some serious heat heading into this next chapter.

For fans of Raimi’s work, the fit here is almost obvious in hindsight. The man who built his career on the boundary between horror and dark comedy, who gave us Ash Williams and his possessed hand, who understands better than almost anyone how to make an audience laugh and scream in the same breath — putting him behind a story about a man who can’t tell where he ends and his puppet begins feels less like a casting decision and more like an inevitability.

No production timeline or cast has been announced yet, but with the script in place and Raimi officially on board, Magic is very much in motion. The dummy is ready. Whether we are is another question entirely.