'Maleficent 2' Gets A New Title, New Release Date And New Poster

Maleficent 2 has a new title: Maleficent: Mistress of Evil. Sounds spooky! The Disney sequel also has a new release date: October 2019. And that's not all! There's also a new poster. It's a Maleficent sequel blow-out! The follow-up to 2014's re-telling of Sleeping Beauty once again features Angelina Jolie and Elle Fanning, with Michelle Pfeiffer joining the cast as well. See the Maleficent 2 poster, and learn the new release date, below.

I kind of dig that Mistress of Evil subtitle – it makes the sequel sound like a pulpy horror comic from the 1950s. As you can see above, October is when you'll get to lay eyes on this film – October 18, 2019, to be precise. That's a bit earlier than expected, as the original implication was that the film wouldn't arrive until 2020.

The sequel is described as "a fantasy adventure that picks up several years after Maleficent, in which audiences learned of the events that hardened the heart of Disney's most notorious villain and drove her to curse a baby Princess Aurora, Maleficent II continues to explore the complex relationship between the horned fairy and the soon to be Queen, as they form new alliances and face new adversaries in their struggle to protect the moors and the magical creatures that reside within."

Maleficent was one of the films that kicked-off Disney's latest craze of remaking all their classic animated films in live-action. But at least Maleficent had a bit of a twist – it told the Sleeping Beauty story from the point of view of the villain. Since then, though, Disney has mostly been content to just do shot-for-shot remakes of the original animated movies.

Angelina Jolie and Elle Fanning are both returning as Maleficent and Princess Aurora, respectively. Michelle Pfeiffer is playing a character named Queen Ingrith. New cast members in addition to Pfeiffer include Chiwetel Ejiofor, Ed Skrein, Robert Lindsay, and Harris Dickinson as Prince Phillip. Meanwhile, original Maleficent stars Sam Riley as Diaval, Imelda Staunton as the pixie Knotgrass; Juno Temple as the pixie Thistlewit, and Lesley Manville as the pixie Flittle, are all returning.

Joachim Rønning, director of Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales, is behind the camera here, with Linda Woolverton and Micah Fitzerman-Blue & Noah Harpster writing the script.

The first Maleficent was a hit, but it feels as if it came out so long ago. Will audiences still be game for a sequel? I'm going to say yes. These Disney films almost always break the bank at the box office. This also marks Angelina Jolie's first on-screen feature film role since 2015's By The Sea, which feels like a big deal.