A productive collaboration with William Goldman as writer and Anthony Hopkins as actor results in an unusually small-canvas story - a thriller on the theme of the ventriloquist whose dummy becomes a lethal alter ego. Director Richard Attenborough described it as ‘A game of creating characters and letting them interact and react.' The precision of the performances and the subtle use of the settings to heighten the mood, tension and character have elevated Magic, after uncertain beginnings, to cult status as a psychological thriller.