Disney has released a Maleficent: Mistress of Evil triptych poster that spotlights its three female stars (Angelia Jolie, Elle Fanning, and Michelle Pfeiffer). The Mouse House has released several live action re-imaginings of its beloved animated classics over the last decade, going back to Alice in Wonderland in 2010. Maleficent, as it were, was the second remake out of the gate after Alice and cast the Oscar-winning Jolie as the infamous horned fairy in a revisionist take on Sleeping Beauty. The resulting film was one of 2014’s biggest box office hits, and helped paved the way for subsequent remakes of The Jungle Book, Dumbo, and so on.
Now, five years later, Jolie is reprising her role as Maleficent for Mistress of Evil, a sequel that was originally scheduled to arrive in 2020, before Disney bumped it up to Fall 2019. The studio dropped a teaser poster for the film in March, but kicked its marketing fully into gear this week with the release of a shiny teaser trailer set to a (what else?) slowed-down cover of “Season of the Witch”. Disney has since unveiled some additional artwork for the movie, in the form of a poster highlighting Jolie and her women costars.
Naturally, Jolie is featured front and center as Maleficent in the latest Mistress of Evil one-sheet, alongside Fanning as Princess Aurora (back from the first movie) and Pfeiffer as new addition Queen Ingrith. You can check the poster out in the space below.
According to its synopsis, Mistress of Evil is set “several years” after the original Maleficent. The teaser trailer hinted at some tensions between Ingrith and Maleficent in the film proper, though it’s not clear yet why these characters will be at odds with one another. That said, it’s possible, but not yet confirmed, that Ingrith is Prince Phillip’s mother in the sequel. Phillip, who’s now played by Harris Dickinson (after Brenton Thwaites portrayed him in the first Maleficent), is shown proposing to Aurora in the teaser, which means he’ll eventually have to introduce her and her surrogate mother to his own parents in the sequel. If Ingrith is in fact his mom, that would explain her less than welcoming response to finding out her son is about to gain the horned fairy Maleficent as an in-law (in a sense, anyway).
Indeed, based on the marketing material released so far, Mistress of Evil will focus heavily on the conflict between Maleficent, Aurora, and Ingrith in the film (whatever its nature). At the same timer, there are other characters who could end up playing key roles in the story here, including Ed Skrein (Deadpool) and Chiwetel Ejiofor (Doctor Strange) as, reportedly, the sequel’s villain and a love interest for Maleficent. Either way, it only makes sense for Mistress of Evil to focus on the relationships between its three female leads, in keeping with its predecessor and the way its re-oriented Sleeping Beauty as a fairy tale about women, first and foremost.
Key Release Dates
Maleficent 2
Release Date:2019-10-18
