Warner Bros. and Alcon’s Practical Magic 2 opened to an estimated $30 million in the U.S. and Canada this weekend, enough to take the No. 1 spot and knock Spider-Man: Brand New Day off the top of the chart. Deadline and the Associated Press put the Sunday estimate at $30 million; Variety and TheWrap had it closer to $28 million going into the weekend, and actuals land Monday. Either way, the witches won the weekend.
The number is the interesting part. $30 million is on the low end of the $30 to $35 million Warner Bros. was projecting, well under the $40 to $50 million some trackers were floating in August, and a $75 million production budget before marketing means the sequel still has work to do. It is also more than the 1998 original opened to, and that holds even after you adjust 28 years of inflation.
The Numbers Behind the Number
The sequel played in 4,146 North American theaters after a $4.7 million Thursday preview night. Overseas it added about $16 million from 77 markets, for a global start of roughly $46 million. Audiences graded it a B+ on CinemaScore, and per TheWrap the opening-night crowd was 75 percent female, with the 35-to-49 bracket handing out an A-. That is the audience that grew up on the first film, and it showed up on schedule.
Behind it, Spider-Man: Brand New Day took $8.4 million in its seventh weekend and now sits at $935 million domestic. The Odyssey held third with $7.4 million, and the Alan Ritchson thriller Runner opened fourth with $6.4 million. The genre’s own holdover, Insidious: Out of the Further, added $3.35 million to reach $155 million.
Comscore analyst Paul Dergarabedian told the AP the opening is not the whole story. “It’s not necessarily about that opening weekend,” he said. “Weekend two will tell the tale, no question about it.”
Critics Are Not Under the Spell
The reviews are rough. Practical Magic 2 sits in the high 30s on Rotten Tomatoes, which by some counts makes it Sandra Bullock‘s worst-reviewed film in nearly two decades. Writing for The Film Verdict, Alonso Duralde concludes that “the reunion of Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman as a pair of witchy sisters fails to enchant.” The Hollywood Reporter’s Angie Han was kinder to the leads, noting that “the palpable affection coursing between Kidman and Bullock remains as sturdy a foundation as ever,” while Yahoo’s Brett Arnold put the blame where most critics did: “The biggest issue is with the screenplay. The movie is so all over the place.”
Audiences disagree. The Rotten Tomatoes audience score is in the 90s, and PostTrak exit polling came back at 4.5 out of 5. A movie critics dismiss and ticket buyers adore is, as it happens, exactly how this franchise started.
How 1998 Set the Bar
The original Practical Magic opened on October 16, 1998 to $13.1 million from 2,652 theaters. It was also No. 1 that weekend, and it also carried a $75 million budget. It finished with $46.7 million domestic and $68.3 million worldwide, which in 1998 terms was a bomb. Critics were harsher then than they are now: a 30 percent Rotten Tomatoes score and a B- CinemaScore, with a consensus that its tonal shifts sank it.
Run that $13.1 million through 28 years of inflation and you get somewhere around $27 million in today’s money. The sequel cleared it. Whether that says more about the film or about how many people spent the last quarter century watching the original on VHS, DVD, cable and streaming every October is the fair question. Bullock herself gave NPR the answer this week: “The gratitude goes to streaming, truly, because around this time every year, the film just found its people.”
That is the whole bet Warner Bros. made. A film that lost money in theaters built a cult one living room at a time, and the studio wagered that cult would buy tickets. The first weekend says it did. The second weekend, as Dergarabedian says, tells the rest.
Who Made It
Susanne Bier directs from a script by Akiva Goldsman, Georgia Pritchett and Kelly Marcel, adapting Alice Hoffman’s 2021 novel The Book of Magic. Bullock and Nicole Kidman return as Sally and Gillian Owens, with Dianne Wiest and Stockard Channing back as the aunts. Joey King and Maisie Williams play Sally’s grown daughters Kylie and Antonia, and Lee Pace, Xolo Maridueña and Solly McLeod round out the new blood. Bier told the Irish Times she had never seen the original until she was approached to make the sequel: “Only then I watched it and loved it.”
iHorror covered the teaser trailer in April and the Bullock and Kidman reunion when it was first announced. Practical Magic 2 is in theaters now, rated PG-13.
