The Illusionist Revealed!

Based on a script written in 1956 by French comedy legend Jacques Tati, the first images from Oscar-nominated animation director Sylvain Chomet’s The Illusionist have been leaked.

Long rumoured to be out this year, the $22m British-French film went into production around 2006 and is still awaiting a UK release date. Although Tati set his story, which he wrote in collaboration with director/screenwriter Henri Marquet, in Prague and the countryside of Czechoslovakia, Chomet has shifted the narrative to Shetland and Edinburgh, where he established his Django Films studio after garnering two nominations at the 2003 Academy Awards for Belleville Rendez-vous.

Intended as an olive branch to his estranged daughter, Tati, who died in 1982, had every intention of starring in the film with her and wrote of an illusionist who, after moving to the isolated countryside, befriends a young girl who is enthralled by his magic tricks. The story evokes “a dying breed of stage entertainer whose thunder is being stolen by emerging rock stars. Forced to accept increasingly obscure assignments in fringe theaters, garden parties and bars, he meets a young fan who changes his life forever.”