Magicians to battle once more on screen in The Night Circus

Last Updated on August 5, 2021

In an interesting bit of behind-the-scenes fantasy-property crossover, Harry Potter producer David Heyman will be teaming up with Summit (the studio behind Twilight) to bring Erin Morgenstern’s New York Times bestselling book The Night Circus to the big screen. Moira Buffini will handle the adaptation process, having already found critical claim with her haunting adaptation of JANE EYRE and some experience in the fantastical with her adaption of vampire story BYZANTIUM.  Maybe saying “adaptation” enough times will bring Nicolas Cage running.  Sort of like saying “Beetlejuice.”  Beetlejuice… Beetlejuice…

Here’s the book’s plot, according to Amazon: “The circus arrives without warning. No announcements precede it. It is simply there, when yesterday it was not.  But behind the scenes, a fierce competition is underway—a duel between two young magicians, Celia and Marco, who have been trained since childhood expressly for this purpose by their mercurial instructors. Unbeknownst to them, this is a game in which only one can be left standing, and the circus is but the stage for a remarkable battle of imagination and will. Despite themselves, however, Celia and Marco tumble headfirst into love… [but] true love or not, the game must play out, and the fates of everyone involved, from the cast of extraordinary circus per­formers to the patrons, hang in the balance, suspended as precariously as the daring acrobats overhead”

If done properly, this seems like it could almost be a combination of Nolan’s THE PRESTIGE and Neil Gaiman’s MIRRORMASK with a bit of HBO’s “Carnivàle” mixed in.  But perhaps I’m hoping far too high…