Disney puts The Order of the Seven on indefinite hold

After bouncing back and forth through production hell for the better part of a decade, THE ORDER OF THE SEVEN was finally gearing up to hopefully shoot with star Saoirse Ronan in London this summer. Except now it won’t be doing anything of the kind, as “sources at Disney say that all development work is being stopped.” Which is a bit of rather curious timing seeing as how scribes Mark Fergus and Hawk Ostby (IRON MAN) were hired just last week to do a new pass on the script.  But consider:

1) MIRROR MIRROR, be it a completely different tone or not, was also a reworking of the Snow White story and did not do all that well for itself.

2) JOHN CARTER‘s box office performance and general public reception has given Disney cause to take a pause when budgets run too high, and while the budget for THE ORDER OF THE SEVEN was undisclosed it can’t have been exactly low.  Rick Ross, the studio head who sheparded THE ORDER OF THE SEVEN into being, stepped down after JOHN CARTER and a replacement has yet to be appointed.

3) This would have been the director’s first feature film directing gig, a fact that no doubt only added to Disney’s nervousness regarding the budget.

It also seems that the plot has shifted from being a martial arts epic to being more of the fantasy genre – “the story centered on a young woman in 19th century Hong Kong who escapes her wicked stepmother and takes refuge with seven men belonging to an ancient order dedicated to fighting demons and dragons.”

Do you think this could mean that Disney is secretly waiting to see how audiences respond to SNOW WHITE AND THE HUNTSMAN? Or are you not even interested in another fantasy/combat focused retelling of Snow White regardless?