Seventh Son Gets Dropped From Warner Bros. Schedule, Universal Picks It Up

It was bad enough when director Sergey Bodrov's Seventh Son got shoved from its prime October release date to a weekend in the middle of January, 2014 but now the film has fallen off the map completely. With the eight year relationship between Warner Bros. and Legendary Pictures coming to an end at the end of this year, the former has opted to let the latter take the fantasy flick in the divorce, meaning that WB will no longer releasing the movie. Instead, says The Hollywood Reporter, the movie will become a part of the recently formed partnership between Legendary and Universal Pictures.

According to the trade, Legendary actually fully financed Seventh Son themselves, meaning that Universal will only be serving as a distributor on the film. A spokesperson for Uni says that the deal has indeed be made, but that they "haven't picked a release date yet" - meaning that the movie may not be staying in January.

This is actually the second development we've heard about this week in the aftermath of the big studio split. Yesterday we learned that Legendary had opted to trade its piece of 2015's Batman vs. Superman movie in exchange for a part of Christopher Nolan's Interstellar, which will be out next November. At the time I guessed that it was a move motivated by the two studios trying to cut ties as soon as possible - and now that Seventh Son has been taken out of the picture that theory is starting to look more solid.

Interstellar isn't the only project that will keep the two studios bonded through the end of 2014, however. With Seventh Son off the map, the next movie they co-produced will be Noam Murro's 300: Rise of an Empire, which will be followed by both Gareth Edwards' Godzilla and Michael Mann's Cyber.

Based on the The Wardstone Chronicles novels by Joseph Delaney, Seventh Son tells the story of Tom Ward, a young man who has always believed he was born to serve a larger purpose in life. His chance to do something bigger comes when he is approached by a man named John Gregory (Jeff Bridges), a Spook who fights evil. Tom becomes John's apprentice so that the younger man can some day take his master's place. Unfortunately, it's at this time that a powerful witch named Mother Malkin (Julianne Moore), returns to their land. Alicia Vikander, Kit Harrington, Djimon Hounsou, Antje Traue and Olivia Williams co-star in the movie, and you can watch the recently released trailer below to get a complete sense of what the movie is.

Eric Eisenberg
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Eric Eisenberg is the Assistant Managing Editor at CinemaBlend. After graduating Boston University and earning a bachelor’s degree in journalism, he took a part-time job as a staff writer for CinemaBlend, and after six months was offered the opportunity to move to Los Angeles and take on a newly created West Coast Editor position. Over a decade later, he's continuing to advance his interests and expertise. In addition to conducting filmmaker interviews and contributing to the news and feature content of the site, Eric also oversees the Movie Reviews section, writes the the weekend box office report (published Sundays), and is the site's resident Stephen King expert. He has two King-related columns.