11 Years Later, Narnia Star’s Epic Fantasy Flop Becomes Netflix Global Hit

Seventh Son has become a global streaming hit a decade after its release. The 2014 fantasy movie is a loose adaptation of Joseph Delaney’s 2004 fantasy novel The Spook’s Apprentice and follows young man Tom Ward (Ben Barnes of the Chronicles of Narnia movies) becoming an apprentice to the witch hunter Master Gregory (Oscar winner Jeff Bridges).

Even though Seventh Son is not available for free or subscription streaming anywhere in the United States at the time of writing, it has nabbed a strong position on Netflix‘s global chart of the most-watched movies on the platform for the week of September 22 through September 28. This comes shortly after it joined the streamer’s library in late September.

Thanks to 4.9 million viewers amᴀssing 8.4 million total viewing hours, Seventh Son has landed at No. 6 on the chart, alongside popular contemporary Netflix тιтles such as the rom-com The Wrong Paris (No. 2) and the record-smashing animated musical KPop Demon Hunters (No. 1). It also landed above the 2025 horror hit 28 Years Later (No. 8).

Overall, Seventh Son is in the Top 10 in 73 different individual countries spanning multiple continents, including Peru, Canada, Argentina, Germany, Ireland, Portugal, Spain, Egypt, Kenya, Nigeria, Japan, South Korea, Pakistan, Australia, and New Zealand.

What This Means For Seventh Son


The cast of Seventh Son posing on the poster
The cast of Seventh Son posing on the poster

Seventh Son has managed to achieve this streaming success in spite of the fact that it was a flop by multiple measures when it originally debuted. Among other issues, it was critically panned. At the time of writing, the Jeff Bridges movie has a dismal 12% score on Rotten Tomatoes and a little-better 30 out of 100 on Metacritic.

Read Seventh Son‘s Rotten Tomatoes Critics Consensus summary below:

Seventh Son squanders an excellent cast and some strange storyline ingredients, leaving audiences with one disappointingly dull fantasy adventure.

Seventh Son was also a commercial flop. Its reported production budget was somewhere between $95 and $110 million, which may have placed its estimated break-even point somewhere between $190 and $275 million. Nevertheless, it only made $114.2 million by the end of its run, a total that placed it well outside the Top 50 highest-grossing movies of the year.

However, 84.9% of its original box office haul came from international markets, which could explain why those same markets are helping it perform well on streaming more than a decade after the fact.

Our Take On The Netflix Resurgence Of Seventh Son


Ben Barnes and Jeff Bridges walking down a dusty street in Seventh Son
Ben Barnes and Jeff Bridges walking down a dusty street in Seventh Son

Ultimately, it seems unlikely that Seventh Son will ever get a sequel, even if it continues to thrive on streaming. It came out too long ago and another installment would still be a huge financial risk without a substantially decreased budget.

However, the success of Seventh Son is strong proof that Ben Barnes fantasy projects continue to do well on Netflix even after the streamer’s abrupt cancellation of Shadow and Bone, his two-season fantasy series. While continued success may not result in the show’s resurrection, it could encourage the streamer to partner with Barnes for a future project in the genre.

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