DreamWorks Studios and Twentieth Century Fox jointly announced Wednesday that they are co-financing Steven Spielberg's epic Robopocalypse.

Disney will distribute Robopocalypse domestically via its Touchstone Pictures label. Fox will handle international distribution.

The movie has a release date of July 3, 2013.

At a time when studios are trimming costs, the joint venture makes sense. Spielberg doesn't come cheap, and this movie -- being an epic, and all -- sounds expensive.

It's based on Daniel H. Wilson's novel about the fate of the human race after a robot uprising.

Fox has a history of these kinds of deals: It teamed with Paramount on the 1997 Titanic, for example.