Has Copperfield's Moon Vanish... Vanished?

Cast your mind back to late October 2023, when the online magic community went abuzz with excitement that the world’s most prolific magician, David Copperfield, would soon unveil the largest illusion in history: he was to make the Moon disappear in February 2024. 

It was set to be a huge event in support of Save The Children USA, and unless he was planning on making the Sun go next, the prospective stunt was sure to be the most epic full stop on a lifetime of grandiose illusions.

Little did we know that the most impossible part of this career defining stunt wasn’t the boldness of making the Moon vanish at all. No, it was the February bit. It’s now May and the Moon hasn’t gone anywhere. I just checked. It’s still there. The only things that have gone are the likelihood we’ll see the moon vanish anytime soon and Save The Children’s association with the whole thing.

So how did we go from Copperfield’s initial announcement making waves, just like the Moon, all over the internet to radio-silence in a matter of months? And if it does go ahead, what on earth is the illusion supposed to be? And how was I, a magician in the UK who still lives with his mum, expected to find any of this out?

Well, I’m happy to say I have made a few (not many but a few!) discoveries that give us an idea of what was to be and what we can expect to come with this unique magic trick. However, before we get into all of that, I think we need to catch up with everything that has taken place so far and why it feels like some people in Las Vegas may be trying to brush some things under the carpet.

On October 27th 2023, along with a teaser trailer, Copperfield’s initial announcement was revealed on NBC’s TODAY show, where he said this about the project:

"It’s taken 30 years of work, that’s literally 30 years of our lives to develop it […] And there’s multiple methods to make it work and I’m collaborating with Save the Children, an amazing organisation to show the world the difference one person can make. If one person can make the moon disappear from the sky, imagine how together we can make poverty and hunger and danger disappear for our children on Earth.”

The announcement was shared all over Copperfield’s social media pages, as well as from members of his team including Harrison Greenbaum and David’s producer and consultant, Chris Kenner.

Cue loads of magicians and Copperfield fanatics speculating what this illusion could entail. Lloyd Barnes shared a brilliant video documenting some of the ingenious and outright bizarre theories shared at the time of what the moon vanish could look like, such as one method using projectors and another with a giant curtain. Regardless of the stunt’s specific details, at least we knew we only had a few months before we could witness it for ourselves… or so we thought…

See, in the first week of January 2024, US Court papers from a 2015 trial against disgraced sex offenders Jeffrey Epstein and his former lover Ghislaine Maxwell were released. The documents included previously redacted names of high-profile individuals associated with Epstein. Amongst that list was David Copperfield.