David Blaine postpones and moves balloon stunt to Arizona

Illusionist and performer David Blaine has postponed his latest stunt in which he planned to float over the Hudson River from New Jersey to New York City held up by nothing but a cluster of helium balloons.

Blaine, 47, announced Sunday he nixed his performance, previously scheduled for Monday, due to unfavorable weather and wind conditions.

Instead will perform the complex project ‘Ascenion’ more than 2,000 miles away in Arizona.

Now depending on weather Blaine will lift off on either September 1 of 2 and the stunt will be livestreamed on YouTube.

In the daring stunt Blaine will float some 18,000 feet, or nearly 3.5 miles, into the sky lifted by 52 helium-filled weather balloons.  

Monday’s forecast for New York City was mostly sunny with winds east-southeast of five mph and gusts of 7mph, as per Accuweather. 

‘It’s the first project I’ve done in a decade and it’s the most ambitious thing I’ve ever worked in my life,’ Blaine said on the Today Show Monday.

‘We’ve been researching and developing this thing and this will be the first time live that I’ve ever done it. So I’m gonna take a bunch of balloons and ride them as high as possible till I almost disappear in the sky and the idea is to jump down and land safely,’ he explained.

He said he was inspired to duplicate the image from the movie Le Ballon Rouge where a little boy goes floating into the sky holding onto a pack of balloons. 

He said for the project he’s supposed to do 500 practice jumps out of a plane and so far he’s completed more than 400. 

Blaine also revealed he had to drop 25 pounds to lighten his load for the project.

For the stunt he’ll wear a lightweight harness running from his wrists to his shoulders.

‘Ascension’ is his first live-broadcast stunt since 2012, when he spent 72 hours standing on a pillar in New York City while being hit with one million volts of electricity.

Blaine’s been training for the last two years for ‘Ascension’ and had to become a licensed pilot. The FAA classified the cluster of balloons he’ll be flying is an ‘experimental aircraft’.

Youtube also helped assemble a team of experts to advise Blaine for the flight like pro skydiver Luke Aikins.

Blaine has gained a reputation for embarking on adrenaline-pumping stunts such as being buried in a plastic box under a three-ton water-filled tank.

In another stunt he spent seven days submerged in an eight-foot diameter water-filled sphere in front of New York City’s Lincoln Center. He also spent nearly 64 hours trapped in a huge block of ice in Times Square. 

In 2003 he did a stunt in London where he lasted 44 days in a suspended box over the Thames River without food and only water for sustenance.