One man’s mission to stop ‘dangerous’ pirates stealing magic

A magician’s hunt for the thieves who were privating his tricks and selling them online has been turned into a major documentary.

Andi Gladwin, who runs one of the world’s biggest online magic stores from his home in Gloucestershire, was alerted to his products being illegally sold in 2017.

Faced with his work being sold for “next to nothing”, he went on a journey to confront the thieves himself – a quest which ended up becoming the heart of the film Stealing Magic.

“It’s not really about the money – you don’t make a lot of money creating magic tricks – but it’s about this idea that when you spend your life creating something, somebody could just take it from you in a second,” he said.

As the owner of Vanishing Inc. Gladwin has spent his career developing his own magic tricks, writing books and creating products for fellow illusionists to use in their own shows.

Due to the issues with pirated material he said people had stopped selling their own tricks altogether.

“That’s bad for magic, that’s dangerous for our future in the creative arts,” he said.