{"id":41580,"date":"2025-09-03T20:25:07","date_gmt":"2025-09-03T20:25:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/41580\/"},"modified":"2025-09-03T20:25:07","modified_gmt":"2025-09-03T20:25:07","slug":"sam-raimi-to-remake-ventriloquist-dummy-horror-movie-magic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/41580\/","title":{"rendered":"Sam Raimi to Remake Ventriloquist Dummy Horror Movie Magic"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tSam Raimi<\/a> and Roy Lee<\/a> are teaming up with Lionsgate for some horror magic.<\/p>\n

\n\tLionsgate 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.<\/p>\n

\n\tMark Swift and Damian Shannon, veteran scribes who previously penned Freddy vs. Jason and the remake of Friday the 13th, will write the script.<\/p>\n

\n\tMagic\u00a0starred Hopkins as Corky, a magician who reaches fame alongside his ventriloquist\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe movie also starred Ann-Margret and Burgess Meredith, was directed by Richard Attenborough, and was written by William Goldman, based on his novel. \u00a0The 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 \u201cMagic is fun, we\u2019re dead.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tChris Hammond and Tim Sullivan, who have long championed the project and guided its development, will produce alongside Raimi and Lee. Raimi Productions\u2019 Zainab Azizi will also produce.<\/p>\n

\n\tExecutive producers are Paul Fishkin\u00a0as well as Vertigo\u2019s\u00a0Andrew Childs.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tLionsgate, 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\u00a0Magic\u2019s reimagining.\u00a0Sullivan, a longtime devotee of the original, has been with the remake from its inception.<\/p>\n

\n\tHammond, who produced the 2003 crime movie\u00a0Shade\u00a0that had Jamie Foxx and Sylvester Stallone in its cast, is currently producing\u00a0Reykjavik\u00a0with 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\u2019s story back to the screen.<\/p>\n

\n\tLee produced Zach Cregger\u2019s 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\u2019s adaptation of Stephen King story The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon and has the company\u2019s King adaptation\u00a0The Long Walk opening in theaters\u00a0Sept. 12.<\/p>\n

\n\tRaimi\u2019s next movie outing is Send Help, 20th Century Studios\u2019 upcoming survival horror thriller starring Rachel McAdams and Dylan O\u2019Brien, and which was written by Swift and Shannon.<\/p>\n

\n\tRaimi is repped by repped by CAA and Hansen Jacobson while Swift and Shannon are repped by UTA and\u00a0McKuin Frankel.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sam Raimi and Roy Lee are teaming up with Lionsgate for some horror magic. Lionsgate is developing a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":41581,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[263],"tags":[18,117,19,17,327,31525,28853],"class_list":{"0":"post-41580","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-eire","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-ie","11":"tag-ireland","12":"tag-movies","13":"tag-roy-lee","14":"tag-sam-raimi"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41580","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41580"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41580\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/41581"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41580"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41580"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41580"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}