In horror-adjacent news, this weekend sees the release of a long-gestating spooky season-centric sequel in the form of Practical Magic 2. The film is a nearly thirty-years-later legacy sequel to the original film from 1998 starring Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman. But even upon release, the first Practical Magic was met with lukewarm box office receipts and mixed-to-negative reviews. Which begs the question: why is there now, in 2026, a Practical Magic 2?
The most surreal thing to me about the marketing in the lead-up to Practical Magic 2 has been the way in which the team has leant all the way into this being a legacy sequel to that original film, as if 1998’s Practical Magic is some universally beloved classic. The trailers have all featured these nostalgic callbacks to beats from that first film, dramatic character unveilings straight of a Marvel movie, and even recreated exact needle drops in the name of hitting that dopamine button.
If there’s any film whose marketing Practical Magic 2 resembles most, it’s undoubtedly Tim Burton’s Beetlejuice Beetlejuice from a few years back. The difference is that Burton’s original Beetlejuice from 1988 was a substantial financial success, well-reviewed, and had cultivated an even larger cult following over the years. So when the Beetlejuice Beetlejuice trailer featured things like an interpolation of "Day-O (The Banana Boat Song),” it actually worked because audiences had a collective remembrance of and inherent nostalgia for that original film. But Practical Magic isn’t Beetlejuice, so instead it feels as if the marketing for Practical Magic 2 is attempting to manufacture this sense of nostalgia and fond remembrances for a film that never really had that on any kind of larger pop-cultural scale.
The first Practical Magic film was directed by Griffin Dunne (the actor from classics like An American Werewolf in London and After Hours), and even he has been outspoken about not being thrilled with the film over the years. It ultimately made $90 million on a $70 million budget, which is to say (after factoring in marketing costs and whatnot) it did not actually even begin to turn a profit. While there certainly has been some critical re-evaluation of it in the years since, mostly by folks drawn to the inherent star-wattage of Bullock and Kidman like moths to a flame, to try and insinuate that Practical Magic has become some beloved cult classic in the years since feels misleading. And yet, that’s been the marketing for the sequel’s entire approach.
To return to the earlier comparison, it does very much feel like Practical Magic 2 was accidentally greenlit by a studio executive like the night after Beetlejuice Beetlejuice released and instantly became a box office sensation. But Practical Magic is far less Beetlejuice or even Hocus Pocus than it is just a fairly obscure late-‘90s movie that happens to star two of the most commercially viable actresses of this century.
On top of all of this, the sequel is also outright atrocious, so it’s got that going for it as well. Years from now, Practical Magic 2 will probably be little more than a cultural footnote, a befuddling question in a round of Jeopardy that no one can get right. It’s just kind of surreal to be living through this exceedingly odd and misplaced moment in time, where even forgotten underperforming ‘90s films can get the all-too-earnest legacy sequel treatment.
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