A precision-crafted $150 million flop died at the hands of Blandness

via Walt Disney Pictures

In the 2000s and 2010s, Disney made it its mission to capitalize on two trends at once, but to say that one fared significantly better than the other would be an understatement. However, The Sorcerer’s Apprentice accomplished the rare feat of ticking both boxes at once, only to fail miserably on both fronts.

The studio’s insatiable desire to create as many live-action blockbuster remakes as possible from its back catalog of animated classics was still in its infancy at the time of the film’s summer 2010 release, with the whimsical fantasy between billions and dollar phenomenon was trapped Alice and Wonderland and Angelina Jolie’s $758 million in earnings malicious.

In the meantime, the mouse house had tried to replicate that Pirates of the Caribbean formula to mixed results with Prince of Persia: The Sands of TimeAnd The Sorcerer’s Apprentice was not so dissimilar to the daring saga with a magical twist. As The Lone Ranger And jungle cruise however, would eventually show that recapturing lightning in a bottle is difficult.

Derived as a $150 million epic fantasy and its sequel, in which Jerry Bruckheimer starred with an A-list star and played a long-haired eccentric cursed by fate and fate, it was clear that was the case National Treasure Director John Turteltaub tried to eat and eat his cake by looking for the perfect balance between Disney’s hottest new trends.

Finally, The Sorcerer’s Apprentice hit the box office and was dismissed by critics and audiences alike, forever marking it as a egregiously failed experiment. As noted in a recent Reddit thread, there’s definitely potential in the premise, but the execution was so bland, safe, and memorable that it never really got a chance to break out of the crowd.