Will ‘Seventh Son’ Be The New ‘Harry Potter’?

Fantasy-adventure fans are used to having their hopes and dreams crushed at the multiplex. Every few years a film will come along that attempts to fill the Lord Of The Rings– or Willow-sized hole in their hearts, and briefly reignite the sword and sorcery merchandising market.

In a post-Game Of Thrones world, however, one wonders if traditional (i.e. fun) fantasy-adventure films have become a little declasse; now it’s all about “hard fantasy”, which is to say, plenty of gore and a grim pallette.

Some hope for the continued life of the former came two years ago, with the start of production on Warner Bros. and Legendary Pictures’ Seventh Son. The film, a loose adaptation of the young adult series The Spook’s Apprentice, would star Jeff Bridges as John Gregory, the ‘Spook’, or witch-hunter.

And certainly, walking onto the immense Vancouver set — magicked up by acclaimed production designer Dante Ferretti — in early 2012, it was hard not to be overcome by the notion that fantasy-adventure was about to make a comeback in a big way.

After a few minutes of frantic scribbling in my notebook, I eventually abandoned the note-taking and instead wandered around, mouth-breathing exactly like you’d expect someone with a wardrobe full of fantasy costumes to do if they were transported to an ever so slightly ahistorical ‘Medieval’ village (which was, at that precise moment, being beset by a horde of stuntpeople).

I say “ahistorical” because unlike most fantasy movies, Ferretti — along with director Sergei Bodrov — didn’t want the world of Seventh Son to look like just another English village of the Middle Ages. Instead, he drew upon ancient architectures from places as far afield as Yemen, Georgia and Iran.

“It’s always this style, like in England, it’s gothic, gothic style,” Ferretti said, with mock boredom. “I said maybe to make something different. So, we put all this stuff together. It’s a mess but it’s okay.” He paused and laughed uproariously. “I think it’s okay. This is my first time [working on a fantasy film]. I don’t know. It might be nobody call me anymore after this.” He shrugged, then dashed off the set, only to reappear inside Gregory’s blacksmithing forge, ever the Italian prankster, pretending to cook a pizza.

With Ferretti himself walking us through Gregory’s armoury and home, which he charmingly and repeatedly referred to as “the spooky dwelling”, I was struck by the scale of the production, which seemed immense for a relatively unknown YA property. (Though there was much uncharitable talk around the lunch table, among the visiting reporters, about Warner Bros.’ being desperate to lock down “the next Harry Potter”.)

We weren’t permitted to interview Bridges, who instead drifted around the set like an apparition; occasionally turning up at the edge of a soundstage to crack wise with the crew. But the rest of the cast, including Julianne Moore (who plays ‘head witch’ Mother Malkin) and Ben Barnes (Tom Ward, Gregory’s apprentice), were conspicuously enthusiastic about the project.

Barnes, no stranger to fantasy-adventure after his time in the world of Narnia (he joked about having fantasy deja vu; “Is there a sword in this film?”), was particularly enthusiastic about the film’s lack of an “English” fantasy milieu. “The stories and the books are much more quintessentially… they feel like English folklore a little bit more, whereas this film is unbelievably international in the way that it feels,” he said, crediting Mongol director Bodrov for his vision. “He’s a very well-traveled and culturally-aware man who just has a very vivid imagination. He created, you know, the Amazonian warlock, casts the witches from Germany and Sweden and America, and all over Africa.”

In an era where fantasy films and TV series are repeatedly criticised for their lack of diversity, this seems like a step in the right direction. Djimon Hounsou, who plays shapeshifting warlock Radu, even thinks the film has taken a brave stance when it comes to the persecution of witches. “From the beginning of time I think we’ve all heard of groups of people being persecuted just because they were different to the ‘norm’, you know?” he said. “I guess this is an opportunity to sort of take [their] side of the story, in a fantasy world.”

At the end of the set visit, even the most cynical members of the junket had done a 180 on their “new Harry Potter” bitching, and we were all ready to witness the revival of traditional fantasy-adventure cinema. But not long after the junket, disaster struck: The film’s release was delayed, which in blockbuster parlance tends to be code for “we are sweeping this under the rug”.

The film’s release had been delayed twice (first from February to October 2013, then to January 2014) by the time I attended the Pacific Rim junket in San Francisco in the summer last year. While there I bailed up Legendary’s CEO Thomas Tull to ask, a little desperately, what the go was in camp Seventh Son. He didn’t miss a beat. “I know I’m supposed to say it, but it’s really good,” he said assuredly. “The delay is because [Rhythm & Hues] had some trouble in the middle of it, which caused us to have to…” He shrugged, ‘c’est la vie’ style. “It’s one of those things you can’t plan for. But I cannot wait for you to see the movie.”

(As it turned out, as part of the bankruptcy hearing, Legendary had just written Rhythm & Hues a cheque for $5m in order to complete their work on Seventh Son. Tull is a persuasive guy, and in the broader scheme of “excuses my movie isn’t being released”, the special effects company going bankrupt is a pretty compelling one.)

Some months after that junket, Warner Bros. famously lost Seventh Son in the “divorce” with Legendary Pictures, and the film went to its new home at Universal Studios — who shunted the then-planned January 2014 release again by shifting it to February 2015, where it now remains.

It may well turn out that the delays will work in the film’s favour: Kit Harington, who plays an earlier apprentice of Bridges’ character, is now a much bigger star thanks to his work on Game Of Thrones, while Antje Traue was one of the few who escaped Man Of Steel critically unscathed thanks to her uncompromising performance as Faora.

While on-set, Traue was in the dark as far as her character’s transformation was concerned, with Seventh Son her second big green screen movie after Man Of Steel. “This kind of movie happens in post-production, you know? I mean, so much of it is just digital, and they’re going to do it on a computer,” she said. “Because we have no idea [what anything looks like], this movie is going to be a big adventure for me to watch in a movie theater.” You and me both, Antje.

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Seventh Son is in cinemas February 6th, 2015.

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Clem Bastow is an award-winning writer and critic with a focus on popular culture, gender politics, mental health, and weird internet humour. She’s on Twitter at @clembastow