October has turned into a hot month for potential box office hits. Last year Halloween opened to $76.2 million and Venom fared even better earlier in the month with an opening of $80.2 million, a record for the month. Maleficent: Mistress of Evil, a sequel to Maleficent, which arguably started the Disney live-action adaptation craze, entered box office tracking today and it should have a healthy start when it opens.
Mistress of Evil enters tracking with an opening of about $50 million. The first film opened to $69.4 million on May 30, 2014, and legged it out to $241.1 million at the domestic box office. The first film was aided by its summer launch and it arrived before a slew of other live-action Disney adaptations. This year we’ve already seen three with Dumbo, Aladdin & The Lion King with only Dumbo failing to register. Aladdin had serious legs this summer and grossed over $1 billion worldwide and The Lion King just exited the top five box office last weekend after staying there since it opened nine weeks ago. While the latter two films were successful, we’ll have to see if Disney live-action fatigue will set in by the time Maleficent arrives.
The sequel should play strong with female audiences and reviews could play a factor although reviews didn’t matter much for the first film (Maleficent holds a 53% rotten score on Rotten Tomatoes). Tracking shows it’s particularly strong with females over and under 25.
Maleficent: Mistress of Evil hits screens on October 18.
