The Sorcerer’s Apprentice is a 2010 fantasy adventure film produced by Jerry Bruckheimer, directed by Jon Turteltaub, and distributed by Walt Disney Pictures, the team behind the National Treasure franchise.
The Sorcerer’s Apprentice made an opening gross of $3,873,997. It debuted at #3 at the box office behind Inception and Despicable Me with $17,619,622.
Parts of the story are loosely based on the Sorcerer’s Apprentice segment in Disney’s Fantasia (with one scene being an extensive reference to it), which in turn is based on the late 1890s symphonic poem by Paul Dukas and the 1797 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ballad.
Balthazar Blake (Nicolas Cage) is a sorcerer in modern-day Manhattan fighting against the forces of evil, in particular his arch-nemesis, Maxim Horvath (Alfred Molina), while searching for the person who will inherit Merlin’s powers.
This turns out to be Dave Stutler (Jay Baruchel), a physics student at New York University, whom Balthazar takes as a reluctant protégé. The sorcerer gives his unwilling apprentice a crash course in the art and science of magic and sorcery, in order to stop Horvath and Morgana le Fay (Alice Krige) from destroying the world.
The film was originally set to be released on July 16, 2010, but was instead released two days earlier on July 14, 2010.
The basic idea for the movie was mostly Nicolas Cage’s, who wanted to make a feature length movie based upon the Fantasia segment of the same name. On February 12, 2007, this film was announced by Disney.
In the early morning hours of May 4, 2009, a Ferrari F430 being driven during filming of a chase sequence, lost control and careened into the window of a Sbarro restaurant in Times Square, injuring two pedestrians, one of whom was struck by a falling lamppost. Filming resumed the following night, when yet another accident occurred. The two accidents were blamed on rain making the roads slick.