Criss Angel says his new show with Cirque du Soleil is a Las Vegas dream nearly 15 years in the making. Photo by John Gurzinski.

"Mindfreak" magician Criss Angel and Cirque du Soleil won't open their long-rumored stage production until the summer of 2008, which gives them time to live up to big promises.

"Imagine if we could reinvent magic like (Cirque du Soleil) reinvented the circus," Angel said in a media event Thursday at Luxor to announce the show. "That is my dream, that is my quest and that is exactly what we're going to do when we open the show."

To which he added, "Please don't mistake what I'm saying for being conceited, but rather for the confidence of 15 years of tireless effort and passion."

Cirque officials were equally bold about bringing something new to the Las Vegas-style magic show.

"I will go on the record and guarantee you this. What we're working on and workshopping, the world of entertainment has never, ever seen," Cirque director Serge Denoncourt said.

A collaboration between Cirque and the 39-year-old illusionist, born Christopher Sarantakos, has been in negotiations since "Hairspray" closed in Luxor's 1,500-seat theater this past June.

Angel's "Mindfreak" is one of A&E cable network's strongest shows. Second-season episodes are frequently rebroadcast, and the third season, now in production to air in June, uses Luxor as the base camp for Angel's on-location illusions.

"He's really a rock star," Luxor President Felix Rappaport said of Angel. "I've gone to (Ultimate Fighting Championship bouts) with him and he gets mobbed. ... That kind of charisma doesn't happen very often in any field. He really has that charisma."

Gille Ste-Croix, one of Cirque's senior creators, said the Canadian company has wanted to do a magic show for years and worked on ideas before Angel entered the mix.

"We looked around all over the world (to see) where magic was today and what we could do," Ste-Croix said.

Cirque shows are known for their "wow factor," Ste-Croix added, and "meeting with Criss was certainly the trigger to see that this show was possible."

Just as "Love," the company's fifth and most recent Las Vegas production, uses Beatles' music as its framework, "I think here the illusions and Criss' magic will be the skeleton of the show. Of course, there will be acrobats, but they will serve in the illusions," Ste-Croix said.

The production will have a vague story line taking the form of "a dream where anything is possible," Angel said. "When you go to sleep and you dream at night the craziest things happen. This is like (Federico) Fellini and (Salvador) Dali coming to life."

Collaborators will include the design studio of Mark Fisher, who did the "Ka" theater; costumer Eiko Ishioka, perhaps best-known for the Francis Ford Coppola movie "Bram Stoker's Dracula"; and puppeteer Michael Curry, who worked on "Ka" and the Broadway adaptation of "The Lion King."

The Luxor theater will get new seating, but won't be gutted as previous venues were for Cirque shows at other properties.

"We believe we have a very functional theater," Rappaport said. "We want to put the investment in the show and really put it onstage."