Angelina Jolie Sequel ‘Maleficent 2’ Moves Up To Fall 2019

Here’s a huge jump on the calendar: Disney is moving the Angelina Jolie vehicle Maleficent: Mistress of Evil from its post Memorial day May 29 release date next year in 2020 to this year, Oct. 18.

That pre-Halloween frame use to be a time on the calendar where films went to die at the box office, but Universal/Miramax/Blumhouse’s Halloween changed all that last year with a $76.2M opening, proving once again that the right product will draw anyone at any time of year (another example is how New Line’s It turned the once dormant post-Labor Day period into one of the more lucrative weekends at the B.O.)

Maleficent: Mistress of Evil will compete against an untitled Blumhouse movie on that date and MGM’s animated version of The Addams Family. 

Disney also dropped a new teaser poster for the pic this morning. Joachim Ronning directs the sequel to the $758.5M global grossing 2014 hit which centers around the femme villain from Disney’s classic Sleeping Beauty. 

Disney will be at the upcoming exhibitor-studio convention CinemaCon in Las Vegas with a two hour session during the afternoon on Wednesday April 3. The question everyone is wondering is how much Fox fare will be in that session; the smart guess being that the Disney-Fox merger will have taken place by that time.