Angelina Jolie was due to return to the live-action version (and reinvention) of the animated Sleeping Beauty story, reprising her role of the apparently (at least partially) misunderstood ‘evil’ queen Maleficent in 2020. However the film, subtitled ‘Mistress of Evil‘, has now been moved up to October of this year and there’s now a sequel giving us a hint of where this next chapter of the story will take us…
The first Maleficent film, released in 2014, reworked aspects and designs from the original animated 1959 Disney classic Sleeping Beauty movie but showed events from the perspective of a wicked but essentially ‘wronged’ Maleficent (essentially taking the idea of Wicked and repurposing it). It scored highly at the box-office, but it’s taken several years – and the strong success of other of Disney‘s animation-to-CGI/live-action releases (Beauty & The Beast, Aladdin, The Lion King) – for the emerald-hued enchantress to get the green light.
Elle Fanning reprises her role as Princess Aurora with Juno Temple, Sam Riley and Imelda Staunton also returning. ‘Newcomers’ include the likes of Ed Skrein, Michelle Pfeiffer, and Chiwetel Ejiofor.
Maleficent: Mistress of Evil opens 18th October…
