THE SORCERER’S APPRENTICE Panel (WonderCon 2010)

In addition to Prince of Persia, Disney also brought a panel for THE SORCERER’S APPRENTICE, which comes out to theaters on July 16. The Sorcerer’s Apprentice panel included producer Jerry Bruckheimer, director Jon Turteltaub, Nicolas Cage (“Balthazar Blake”), Jay Baruchel (“Dave Stutler”), and Teresa Palmer (“Becky”).

Once again, we got treated to a couple of clips, which looked really great. I was already excited about the movie after seeing the trailer, but now I’m even more excited. In the first clip, we got the see the first encounter between Balthazar (Nicolas Cage) and a young Dave Stutler (Jake Cherry). In the scene Dave lets Maxim Horvath (Alfred Molina) out of his urn. Balthazar is able to contain him by locking both of them in an urn, but he tells Dave that he will return in 10 years.

I do have to mention that right after the clip was show John Turteltaub (who was so much fun) said: “Doesn’t that look so much better than Inception?” and then started banging his head on mic, haha. For those who don’t know, Christopher Nolan’s new film Inception (which is getting a lot of hype) will be released on the same date.

The second clip we were shown took place 10 years after the first one, when Balthazar and Maxim Horvath return. Maxim has found his own apprentice, whom he sends after Dave.

As I said above, the clips looked great and I just love the combination of magic, action and humor. Also I am a fan of the original Mickey Mouse version, so it’ll be interesting to see how that is translated into the screen. Speaking of which, when asked about Fantasia, Jon Turteltaub mentioned that it does play a little bit in the film, however as John Turteltaub noted “Obviously we’re not doing two hours on a mop.” That said the famous mops scene from Fantasia does make it in the movie.

And finally as you can imagine, this is a very heavy visual effects movie with over 1000 visual effects shot. So I think we’re in for a treat.