Presto Poof!

Hayden Christensen (Jumper) and Djimon Hounsou (Blood Diamond) will star in "Mandrake,"a film adaptation of Lee Falk's comic strip "Mandrake the Magician " reports Coming Soon.

Christensen replaces Jonathan Rhys Meyers in the lead role while Hounsou plays Mandrake's assistant

The tale sees Jackson Mandrake who lives life on the edge as an underground magician and escapologist--his act increasingly dangerous.

Following a daring escape from an SUV that has been dropped out of an plane at the Burning Man Festival, he is coerced by the Central Intelligence Agency into breaking a deep-cover agent named Xi Shing Lung out of a maximum security jail.

Soon, Mandrake learns that it was all a set-up. Xi is a CIA agent gone bad. He offers Mandrake the chance to join his crime ring. When Mandrake refuses, he's a marked man. He must escape his would-be-killers and also the real CIA who accuse him of being in league with Xi.

His quest to clear his name leads him to confront his past and the girl he left behind.

Mimi Leder (Deep Impact, The Peacemaker) calls action on the film Based on an original script by Kevin Bernhardt, the film was scripted by Josh Oppenheimer, Thomas Dean Donnelly,J.V. Hart and Ian Jeffers.

The potential for a good flick is there--Having that many writers on the script is reason to pause though. A case of "too many cooks in the kitchen"?