"Practical Magic 2" opens in theaters this weekend, sending Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman back into the Owens family's kitchen 28 years after the original became a word-of-mouth cult favorite despite a lukewarm theatrical run.
Directed by Susanne Bier from a script credited to Akiva Goldsman, Georgia Pritchett and Kelly Marcel, the sequel is set roughly a quarter-century after the first film and follows the Owens women as a discovery about the family's history threatens to unravel their hard-won normalcy. Bullock and Kidman return as sisters Sally and Gillian Owens, joined again by Dianne Wiest and Stockard Channing as their aunts, with newcomers Joey King, Lee Pace, Maisie Williams, Xolo Maridueña and Solly McLeod rounding out a cast built to carry the franchise to a new generation.
Warner Bros. is projecting a domestic opening in the $30 million to $35 million range from roughly 4,000 theaters, while independent trackers have pushed estimates as high as $40 million to $50 million, which would let the sequel match or exceed the original film's entire lifetime domestic haul in a single weekend. The 1998 "Practical Magic" opened to just $13.1 million and finished its run with $46.7 million domestically, a soft debut that nonetheless gave way to a long afterlife on cable and streaming that turned it into an autumn perennial, particularly among viewers drawn to its witchy, low-stakes take on sisterhood and grief.
Early reviews land mixed
Early reviews have been measured. The Hollywood Reporter called the follow-up "harmless, but hardly enchanting," suggesting it works well enough as nostalgia to conjure a few warm sparks without quite recapturing the original's specific spell. Critics have generally credited Bullock and Kidman's chemistry and Bier's handling of the film's quieter, family-centered scenes while noting the new supporting cast has less room to make an impression in a plot built to service franchise mechanics.
The film also arrives as a pressure test for Warner Bros., which has had an uneven year at the box office and is counting on "Practical Magic 2" to close out the summer-into-fall corridor on a high note. Distributors are watching whether it can unseat "Spider-Man: Brand New Day" atop the domestic chart, a matchup framing the weekend as counterprogramming aimed squarely at adult and female audiences who have had comparatively few big-screen options this year.
Whether the sequel can translate nostalgia into a durable new franchise, rather than a one-off cash-in on the original's belated cult status, will likely hinge on how audiences respond over its first ten days, the window studios now use to gauge legs in an increasingly front-loaded box office. For now, the Owens sisters are back in theaters for the first time in nearly three decades, betting that the audience that made the first film a slow-burn classic on cable television will show up in a single weekend instead.
