Biography

Since 1984, Franz Harary has been one of the most widely seen illusionists in the world, and most of that audience has never been in the United States. CNN Money reported in 2015 that his illusions have been seen by more people in more countries than those of all other magicians combined. The largest share of that viewership is in Asia, where he has been a network television headliner for three decades.

His Asian broadcast record includes a 120-minute special, The Magic of Franz Harary, for TBS Japan; the 90-minute Franz Harary's Mega Magic for Fuji TV, along with Hey, Hey, Hey: Live from Yokohama Arena; Magic Spectacular and Showtime for NHK; Millennium Magic for Tokyo Broadcasting System at the turn of 2000; the 35th Anniversary Special for NTV Japan; Franz Harary Super Magic and the Tenth Anniversary Special for TTV Taiwan; the 90-minute Franz Harary's Magic in Changsha, Shanghai for CCTV China, for whom he also designed a skyscraper vanish; Franz Harary's Magic in Kuala Lumpur for TV3 Malaysia; The Magic of Franz Harary for RCTI Indonesia; Franz Harary Magic Rocks the World for TV3 Thailand; a Christmas special for SBC Singapore; The Illusions of Franz Harary for Abu Dhabi TV; the United Arab Emirates 48th National Day Spectacular; Harary's Hypereality for ZTV India, where he also co-hosted the Zee Cine Awards; and specials produced in Guangzhou, Harbin, Hunan and Shenzhen. In 2010 he served as principal judge across the run of India's Magic Star and designed the series' original illusions, more than two hundred of them, built in three months. He has also headlined 90-minute specials for Panam TV Lima and ZTV Peru, appeared on Televisa in Mexico and TV Globo in Brazil, and hosted the Rimini Masters of Magic series for TV 5 Italy.

He plays the buildings to match: Hong Kong Coliseum, Singapore Indoor Stadium, Stadium Negara in Kuala Lumpur, Stadium Nasional in Jakarta, Taipei National Stadium, Toyota Stadium in Japan, Indira Gandhi Stadium in Delhi, Shanghai's Olympic Colosseum, the Asia Games Stadium, a twenty-show run in a 9,000-seat stadium in Shenzhen, and a three-month headline residency at Kingdom of Dreams in New Delhi.

In 2015 he opened Franz Harary's House of Magic at Studio City Macau, a US$40 million, four-venue immersive complex inside a US$3.2 billion resort, announced in partnership with Melco Crown Entertainment Co-Chairman and Chief Executive Lawrence Ho. Harary designed the 300-seat Mega Magic Theater himself and curated the rotating international roster that played the building, including Luis de Matos, Rudy Coby, James More, Danny Cole, Michael Turco, and Mark Kalin and Jinger Leigh. In 2019 he was engaged by a Beijing-based company to rebuild elements of the complex in Sanya, China, as the show Magic Stars.

His work in music began in 1984. At twenty-one, a music student at Eastern Michigan University who had sent in an unsolicited video of himself making a van appear in a campus parking lot, he was hired to design the magic for the Jacksons' Victory Tour, levitating Michael Jackson, vanishing him on one side of the stage and returning him with his brothers on the other. The Jackson relationship ran twenty-five years: the Victory Tour in 1984, the Dangerous tour, the HIStory tour in 1996, private commissions at the Neverland home theater around 2000, and friendship until Jackson's death in 2009. He has designed concert illusions for Madonna, Prince, Janet Jackson, Cher, Tina Turner, Usher, Justin Bieber, Alice Cooper, Shania Twain, Reba McEntire, Snoop Dogg, Run-DMC on the Raising Hell tour, 'N Sync, TLC, Boyz II Men, Earth, Wind & Fire, Kool & The Gang, LL Cool J, Janelle Monae and T.I., and, since 2001, eighteen entirely different illusions for Missy Elliott. In Asia his concert clients include Ayumi Hamasaki, Aaron Kwok, Takizawa and Dreams Come True.

In the United States his effects have appeared at the Rose Bowl halftime show in 1983, the Grammy Awards in 1991, the Jerry Lewis Muscular Dystrophy Telethon for NBC that same year, and at Super Bowl halftime, the American Music Awards, the MTV Video Music Awards, the Soul Train Awards, the BET Awards and the Academy Awards, where his work was recognized for technical merit. He designed all the magic for the Broadway production of Ragtime, reconstructing Houdini's original escape formulas to do it, and has performed at Radio City Music Hall, the Apollo Theatre and Broadway's Criterion Center. He hosted and starred in thirteen hours of Masters of Illusion for Pax TV, the original run of a series still in production on The CW, and in The Magic of Christmas for the same network. Other credits include The Science of Magic for Discovery in 2001, the World Magic Awards for Fox Family in 2003, Franz Harary's World Mega Magic for the Travel Channel in 2008, the Beat Freaks levitation on MTV's America's Best Dance Crew in 2009, The War Illusionist for the History Channel, The 100 Greatest Illusions of All Time and The History of Magic for the BBC, and the Royal Variety Performance in 2007. He has appeared in more than forty television specials for NBC, CBS, ABC, Discovery, History, the Travel Channel and the BBC, and his own series, Magic Planet, runs twelve episodes in international syndication.

Outdoors and at architectural scale, he vanished NASA's Space Shuttle at the Kennedy Space Center in a single take, moved Hawaii's Diamond Head two miles out to sea in 1996, vanished the Taj Mahal for over a minute in 1998 and the Sphinx at Giza in 1999, and made the Luxor Hotel in Las Vegas invisible. He is the first world-class illusionist to perform a full program of illusions entirely of his own design.

As a designer of permanent attractions he has worked for four Disney parks, Universal Studios, Six Flags Magic Mountain, Blackpool Pleasure Beach, Phantasialand in Germany, Seoul Land in Korea, Happy Valley Beijing and Shenzhen, and Polar World in China, with two further marine parks of his own design under construction in China.

His 2011 TED Talk, performed with the actual escape apparatus built for Ragtime, received a standing ovation and established him as a keynote speaker for corporate and executive audiences. He currently tours the illusion spectacle Imagine Nation, the subject of a 2025 special issue of Vanish International Magic Magazine.
- IMDb mini biography by: Franz Harary Productions