There’s definitely been a few exceptions to the rule over the decades, but when any movie finds itself suffering through a tortured production before being placed on the shelf to gather dust for years prior to eventually hitting theaters, chances are it’s a disaster. Living up to its pre-release expectations, Seventh Son was truly dire.
On paper, a high concept $110 million fantasy that carried an esteemed ensemble that wouldn’t look out of place in an awards-baiting prestige drama had at least a modicum of potential, but the longer the saga of director Sergei Bodrov’s literary adaptation dragged on, the more it became clear there was no other outcome than catastrophe.
As well as going over-budget, the visual effects company working on the movie went bankrupt, before Warner Bros. washed its hands of Seventh Son altogether and handed the project off to Universal, which led to the originally-announced theatrical bow of Feb. 2013 being pushed back by 24 months.
Dead on arrival, the monotonous misfire could only scrape together a 12 percent Rotten Tomatoes score and 34 percent audience approval rating, losing $85 million to add further insult to near-fatal injury after tanking at the box office. As has been made repeatedly clear, though, stacked casts can often lead to an uptick in interest on streaming, with Seventh Son finally having something go its way for a change.
Per FlixPatrol, Rakuten users must have become the latest hardy band of viewers hooked by the prospect of seeing Jeff Bridges, Julianne Moore, Alicia Vikander, Ben Barnes, Kit Harington, and Djimon Honsou lending their heavyweight talents to an insipid effort, with the lamentable failure currently riding its latest wave of new momentum on the platform.