‘Maleficent’ Blows Away Competition On Opening Weekend

Maleficent has been working hard to drum up excitement over the last few months. All that hard work has apparently paid off for the Sleeping Beauty reimagining as Maleficent took home the box office crown on its opening weekend.

The Angelina Jolie vehicle is being reported to have brought in more than $100 million overseas for the weekend. Add that to the more than $70 million the movie brought in here in the United States and it was a very good weekend for Maleficent indeed.

With the summer getting into full swing, there are a number of movies Maleficent had to fight off in order to take the top spot. In particular, the film had to beat off the second week of X-Men: Days of Future Past.

Despite the stout competition, Maleficent showed it is able to stack up against some of the biggest names in Hollywood. The film managed to make the top 30 biggest openings of all time, finishing just behind the new Godzilla and War of the Worlds.

This is one of Angelina Jolie’s first live action appearances in a movie in quite a few years and it appears she enjoyed her role as the titular Maleficent quite a bit. While X-Men was indeed beaten out by Maleficent it was a bit of a close race.

That could mean that the two big heavyweights of the early summer schedule are going to be going strong for quite a while. Moviefone is reporting that X-Men was able to stay within $10 million of Maleficent thanks to overseas strength. Here in the US, Maleficent was able to beat the Marvel movie by quite a large margin.

In the US, Maleficent brought home a number just over $70 million and X-Men pulled in just over $32 million. Another movie that opened this weekend and was looking to have a better haul was A Million Ways to Die in the West. The Seth McFarlane flick managed to finish a distant third in US box offices, making a little more than $17 million.

Maleficent wasn’t really challenged by any film in the United States, as even the giant lizard rampaging across the world couldn’t even come close to knocking the Disney flick off its top spot. While Jolie and company were likely celebrating the success of Maleficent, McFarlane is licking his wounds after his latest big screen attempt.

The real question after opening weekend is just how much money, especially around the globe will Maleficent finally rake in when its said and done over the next few weeks.