It’s been announced that a sequel is in the works to 1998 film Practical Magic, with lead actresses Nicole Kidman and Sandra Bullock said to be returning. To much surprise and delight, Warner Bros made the announcement on its official TikTok account on Monday, 26 years after the cult classic was first released. Based on the 1995 novel of the same name, Kidman, 56, and Bullock, 59, portrayed the witchy Owens sisters, Gillian and Sally, who are descended from a long line of magic-wielding women and cursed by a historical matriarch to never feel the pain of love.
When Sally accidentally poisons Gillian’s abusive ex-boyfriend, the two then end up relying on their powers to try and figure the way out of the criminal mess. The movie’s impressive supporting cast also included Stockard Channing and Dianne Wiest as the girls’ aunts, Goran Višnjić, Evan Rachel Wood, Aidan Quinn, Margot Martindale and Mark Feuerstein. Upon release, Practical Magic did not set the screen aflame, grossing less than its production budget of $75million with $68.
3m worldwide. Reviews were not kind either, with the film holding a paltry, rotten score of 24% on review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, drawn from 98 reviews. Several compared the movie unfavourably to The Witches of Eastwick, with the Irish Times branding it ‘an inane and insipid effort’ and the Independent on Sunday describing it as ‘a sibling soap-opera with a dash of mumbo-jumbo’.
However, audience members seem to disagr.