No sooner does one film about a trainee exorcist come along (The Rite) than another follows in its wake. Reports are emerging that Jeff Bridges has signed on for the mentor role in **The Seventh Son.
It's all a bit different to yer usual exorcist fare however, since The Seventh Son is Warner Bros and Legendary Pictures' crack at Joseph Delaney's The Spook's Apprentice; the first book in his kids' series The Wardstone Chronicles (it's called The Last Apprentice: Revenge of the Witch in the US, just to confuse things further).
Bridges then will be playing The Spook, a sort of kindly Matthew Hopkins who travels around the English countryside in the 18th Century, despatching ghosts and goblins. The Dude, it appears, will not abide the supernatural. He acts as Ben Kenobi to farmboy Tom, a seventh son of a seventh son who has also has the power to see the fairy folk all around him. The first book sees Tom and The Spook pitted against evil witch Mother Malkin, who has a thing for cake.
Offers are currently out to Alex Pettyfer for the role of Tom (rather older than the 13-year-old of the novel) and Jennifer Lawrence for Alice, Mother Malkin's daughter who may or may not be a chip off the old block.
Warners are clearly hoping this will be the next Harry Potter, and are very keen for it not to be the next Vampire's Apprentice. Sergey Bodrov (Mongol) is attached to direct.