Practical Magic is one of my favorite fall watches, so it’s hard to believe that, with the hindsight of 2026, the movie was a major financial failure. The movie has become an October staple; “midnight margaritas” has practically become its own Halloween tradition, and Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman are now back together for Practical Magic 2. None of that was guaranteed in 1998. As a matter of fact, Bullock remembers pretty clearly what it felt like watching the movie flop.
Speaking with Variety ahead of the sequel’s 2026 calendar release, the Oscar winner recalled how confident everyone felt about Griffin Dunne’s original movie before audiences and critics got their hands on it. She explained:
We thought, ‘This is going to be such an amazing film. People are going to love it.’ And then it got quiet. It got quiet. [They] were like, ‘How many women in a film do you need? How many tones do you need? What kind of film is this?’
Those questions pretty much summarize the movie’s original reception. Practical Magic opened at No. 1 in October 1998 with $13.1 million, but it eventually finished with about $46.9 million domestically and $68.3 million worldwide. The Numbers lists its production budget at $60 million, while other contemporary estimates have placed it closer to $75 million. Either way, once marketing and theaters’ share of ticket sales entered the equation, those grosses were not enough to make Warner Bros. happy.
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Critics were even less enchanted. The movie currently sits at 30% on Rotten Tomatoes, with much of the criticism centered on its wild tonal swings. One minute Bullock and Kidman are drinking margaritas with Stockard Channing and Dianne Wiest. The next, the movie is dealing with domestic abuse, murder and a boyfriend who refuses to stay dead.
I get why that baffled people in 1998. I also think that weird mixture is a big reason people love it now. Because Practical Magic did eventually find its audience. It just took the long way around.
Ultimately, the movie became a fixture on cable and VHS, where a generation of viewers could watch it repeatedly without worrying about opening-weekend numbers. As has been noted by film analysts, many women who grew up obsessively watching the movie on cable and on home video made it an annual Halloween favorite. Dunne himself said he began noticing the change when his daughter’s teenage friends started quoting the movie and freaking out when they learned her dad had directed it.
Now, Bullock and Kidman are returning for a sequel that probably would have sounded insane to anyone looking at those 1998 numbers. Kidman told the outlet that the timing was never something they tried to force:
It just happened. It was more like serendipity, and it came, and we were ready, and everything fell into place. It’s like in life — you try to force things; it doesn’t work. You have to wait, be patient, and we both kind of open to it.
Practical Magic 2, directed by Susanne Bier, is a page-to-screen adaptation of Alice Hoffman’s The Book of Magic, and it also brings back Channing and Wiest while adding Joey King, Maisie Williams and Lee Pace, which has caused a bit of controversy, as one of the original cast members was not asked back.
There is something fitting about a sequel arriving this way. After all, the first movie spent years quietly finding the audience Bullock thought would be there from the beginning. Turns out she was right. They were just late.
Check out Practical Magic 2 when it hits theaters on September 10, but if you want to revisit the OG that started it all, its streaming with an HBO Max subscription.