Disney's Jerry Bruckheimer-produced family fantasy film "The Sorcerer's Apprentice" got off to a slow $3.9 million start Wednesday, according to studio estimates.
The film is still on pace to meet its pre-release forecast, which predicted a five-day premiere performance of around $25 million. In order to achieve profitability, "Sorcerer's" will probably have to conjure up the same foreign-market magic that Bruckheimer's last film, "Prince of Persia, did after it underperformed Stateside.
To spark interest in the film, which is debuting into market heavy in PG-rated competition, Disney is offering a two-for-one ticket promotion through its Twitter account.
With reviews generally poor — Rotten Tomatoes scores "Sorcerer's" at 36 percent fresh — the studio is looking for anything it can find for a movie that had worse tracking scores than "Prince of Persia" in the weeks before its release.
"Sorcerer's Apprentice" re-teams the actor-director tandem of Nicolas Cage and Jon Turteltaub, who enjoyed box-office success together on Bruckheimer's "National Treasure" franchise.
