Rick Lax is a close-up magician; yes, for real. About a year and a half ago, he put together a homemade reality TV pilot called Wizard Wars, in which a bunch of Las Vegas illusionists faced off a la Chopped to see who could invent the best new trick. I interviewed Lax about it at the time, and during the conversation we joked that the ball was now in Syfy's court. Obviously, that would probably never happen.

Obviously, we were wrong.

On March 4, Syfy will debut Wizard Wars in slightly different form: an hour-long special that pits magic-makers against each other in an attempt to win cash and bragging rights. (Turns out the idea of pairs of magicians battling each other and then going toe-to-toe with top magicians makes for pretty good TV.)

Shortly after Lax released his online pilot (below), which he made at his Las Vegas apartment, he was contacted by A. Smith & Co., the production company behind Hell's Kitchen and Trading Spaces, to see if he wanted to work on the show together. "I asked them, 'What are the odds that this will actually happen?' And they said, 'One out of 100,'" Lax says. After developing the show, they took it to several networks, saving Syfy—Lax's dream—for last.

"I'll be damned if they didn't buy it," Lax says.

>Hopefully, the reality format will get people to care about \[the magic\] process, which I think is oftentimes as interesting—if not more interesting—than the end result. Rick Lax

The format is simple: Two two-person teams of greenhorn magicians are pitted against each other in a magic-off where they are given an assortment of random objects and tasked with integrating them into an original trick. The winner of that round—chosen by a panel of judges led by Penn & Teller—then faces The Wizards, a group that includes World Championship of Magic winner Gregory Wilson, Ellen DeGeneres favorite Justin Flom, and mentalist Angela Funovitz. (Sadly, no Gob Bluth.) If they beat the Wizards, the n00bs get $10,000, "but more importantly they get the respect of everyone in the magic community," Lax says, "because everyone knows how good the Wizards are."

The special was filmed in December at the historic Herald Examiner building in Los Angeles, and even though Lax won't reveal what happened, he does say that one trick, created by a contestant named Marcus Eddie and employing a two-liter bottle and a postcard, is "as deceptive as any trick I've ever seen."

Watching tricks be born might be the most fascinating part of Wizard Wars. Although the idea of battling magicians has an obvious kitschy appeal, seeing how illusionists construct those abracadabra moments is a rare thing. People have always been curious about the mechanics and secrets of of illusion, and Syfy's new show could pull back that curtain without resorting to the cornball approach of other shows like Breaking the Magician's Code: Magic's Biggest Secrets Finally Revealed.

"Hopefully, the reality format will get people to care about this process," Lax says, "Which I think is oftentimes as interesting—if not more interesting—than the end result."