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"On an average summer at the movies, you'd see a healthy mix of properties raking in some serious money. With the multitude of options one traditionally has during this time of year, records are broken left and right, and the high-water mark is usually set at a breakneck pace. Unfortunately, this summer's options haven't been as diverse as audiences would like, which has resulted in a glut of superhero films ruling the box office roost. However, there's one movie that's slowly worked its way to the top of the non-comic book heap, and it's the only movie of its type to cross $600 million this summer: Angelina Jolie's\u00A0Maleficent.\nAccording to\u00A0Box Office Mojo, the Disney fairy tale picture has just crossed the $600 million mark with an international gross of about $602 million. That's right, in the same summer that delivered us a young adult literature hit overnight, several sequels to rather profitable franchises and a surprisingly successful\u00A0Godzilla\u00A0reboot,\u00A0Maleficent\u00A0has somehow had the staying power to make itself a fixture at the 2014 box office longer than its contemporaries. So just what is\u00A0Maleficent's\u00A0secret? Some would say it's Angelina Jolie's star power, thus confirming her status as the last viable box office star. When you consider how star driven the international market is, and how big Angelina Jolie is with that same market, it's not that big of a stretch. Others would say it's the film's fairy tale retold approach to storytelling, and since that's one of two things still keeping\u00A0Once Upon A Time\u00A0on the air (besides the free marketing for films like\u00A0Maleficent\u00A0and\u00A0Frozen\u00A0that Disney can use the show to shill), that too is not a hard prospect to grasp.\nPersonally, I'd say it's the power of the Disney brand. Sure, the previous two factors definitely had a hand in the ultimate success of the film, but the advertising blitz a company like Disney can afford to launch puts any film in the forefront. Kind of like how Disney kept telling the world it wanted to see a new\u00A0Pirates Of The Caribbean\u00A0film every couple of years or so,\u00A0Maleficent\u00A0has been pushed big time through any venue that Disney could buy advertising for. And much like Johnny Depp and the\u00A0Pirates Of The Caribbean\u00A0franchise,\u00A0Angelina Jolie\u00A0will probably be ready to return to the plate to knock another one out of the park for the Mouse House.\nFurthermore, the person that profits from\u00A0Maleficent's\u00A0success, even more so than Angelina Jolie herself, is scribe Linda Woolverton. While her name isn't instantly recognizable, her film credits are full of Disney films that have gone on to spawn their own sequels.\u00A0Homeward Bound: The Incredible Journey,\u00A0The Lion King,\u00A0Mulan\u00A0and even the recent Tim Burton remake of\u00A0Alice In Wonderland\u00A0are all credits to her career as a Disney magic maker. We'll see if her spell continues to keep the public, as well as the suits, in her grasp after they've seen her work on the\u00A0Alice In Wonderland\u00A0sequel,\u00A0Through The Looking Glass. As for Angelina Jolie's spell, well it's probably a good thing that she's branching out as a director as a fall back. After all, even Johnny Depp makes a gigantic and costly misstep\u00A0here\u00A0and\u00A0there."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://mashable.com/2014/07/07/maleficent-crosses-600-million/>