"Practical Magic 2" opened at No. 1 at the domestic box office this weekend, pulling in an estimated $28 million to $30 million over its first three days and ending "Spider-Man: Brand New Day's" six-week run atop the charts, according to studio estimates cited by trade outlets. The Warner Bros., New Line and Alcon Entertainment release reunites Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman as witch sisters Sally and Gillian Owens, 28 years after the original "Practical Magic" became a modest theatrical performer that grew into a cult classic on home video and cable.
The sequel opened in more than 4,000 North American locations, taking in roughly $13 million on its Friday debut from 4,146 theaters. That single-day figure alone tops the entire three-day, $13.1 million opening the 1998 original earned in its debut weekend, though the new film's $75 million budget dwarfs what New Line spent the first time around. Box office trackers described the post-summer session as generally soft, meaning "Practical Magic 2's" debut was enough to claim the top spot without putting up blockbuster-scale numbers.
Critics Split From Audiences
The film arrives with an unusually wide gap between critical and audience reaction. Rotten Tomatoes lists a 39 percent Tomatometer score from more than 120 reviews, against a 92 percent audience score from upwards of a thousand ratings — the kind of divide distributors typically hope signals a movie built for repeat, word-of-mouth business rather than pure critical acclaim.
Tribune News Service critic Katie Walsh landed on the more forgiving end of the reviews, writing that despite some cheesiness, the reunion still works:
The midnight margaritas are still flowing, and Bullock and Kidman haven't lost their touch yet.
Katie Walsh, Tribune News Service
Other critics were less charitable. Digital Spy's Ian Sandwell wrote that the sequel "attempts to use the same ingredients to make the same potent spell, but gets the mix all wrong," while AwardsWatch's Sophia Ciminello, in a review roundup of early reactions, argued it "fails to conjure up the magic of its predecessor." A recurring complaint: the film splits up its expanded ensemble for long stretches instead of keeping the core cast together on screen.
A Bigger, Busier Owens Family
Directed by Susanne Bier, the film brings back Dianne Wiest and Stockard Channing as the eccentric aunts alongside Bullock and Kidman, while adding Joey King and Maisie Williams as Sally's grown daughters and Lee Pace as a magic-history academic drawn into Sally's orbit. The expanded cast anchored a marketing push built on nostalgia for the original's candlelit aesthetic and the promise of a new generation of Owens women.
Opening-night audience data skewed heavily female, at roughly three-quarters of ticket buyers, with the strongest response from moviegoers 35 to 49, the group most likely to have seen the original during its theatrical run or its long afterlife on cable. Younger audiences responded more modestly, according to exit polling reported alongside the box office figures.
Whether the sequel sustains its opening depends on that audience-critic gap holding over the coming weeks: films with strong audience scores despite soft reviews often hold better weekend to weekend than critical favorites with lukewarm audience reception, since word of mouth spreads slowly but tends to stretch out a run. Warner Bros. has not indicated plans for a further sequel, but it will be watching the next few weekends before making that call.
