Practical Magic 2 opened in the United States and Canada on 10 September 2026, twenty-eight years after the original. It stars Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman as Sally and Gillian Owens again, and it has been the witch film people have been talking about all spring and summer. If you are going to see it, or you already have, this post sorts the facts from the hype and looks at what the story does with real witchcraft ideas. I will keep spoilers to the minimum, and I will warn you before anything big.
The facts
According to the film’s Wikipedia entry, Practical Magic 2 premiered at Odeon Luxe Leicester Square in London on 26 August 2026 before its North American release on 10 September. It was originally scheduled for 18 September. Susanne Bier directed it, and the screenplay is credited to Akiva Goldsman, Georgia Pritchett and Kelly Marcel. It is based on Alice Hoffman’s 2021 novel The Book of Magic, the last book in her Practical Magic series.
The supporting cast includes Stockard Channing and Dianne Wiest returning as the aunts Frances and Jet, plus Joey King, Maisie Williams, Lee Pace and Xolo Maridueña. Critics have been mixed. At the time of writing Rotten Tomatoes lists a 38 per cent approval score from 121 reviews and Metacritic sits at 44 out of 100. Audiences have been kinder, with a CinemaScore of B plus, up from the original’s B minus. Review scores move, so check the current figures before you quote them.
A film that was never supposed to be a hit
The first Practical Magic, released in 1998, did poorly at the box office and was not loved by critics. It became a cult film anyway, largely through repeat viewings, home video and a generation that grew up with it. An HBO prequel series was announced and then scrapped in 2019. The sequel is a reminder that a film that misses the mark on opening weekend can still find the people it was made for. It is also a good example of how witch media tends to work: it is rarely the most acclaimed film that survives, but the one that gave people a language and a look they wanted to keep.
What the film gets right
Family inheritance is the engine of the whole story. The Owens women carry a curse, but they also carry a house, a garden, a set of rules and a way of being witches together. That is closer to how many real practitioners describe their craft than the solitary, secret-book image: knowledge passes sideways and down through families, neighbours and friends, and it comes with obligations as well as power.
The kitchen as a site of working is another thing the films have always done well. Herbs, salt, a pot on the stove, a midnight margarita. The first film made domestic magic look ordinary and powerful, and it is still one of the more accurate portrayals of kitchen witchery in mainstream cinema.
Sisterhood and what you owe each other is the third. A working that needs two people with different gifts and a lot of trust is a real idea. Many traditions do group workings on exactly that principle: one person holds the space, another does the speaking, another carries the energy.
What it gets wrong, or at least dramatises
The curse itself is a storytelling device. Real practitioners will tell you that curses, if you work with them at all, are a specific, intentional act with a defined target, not a blanket family fate that kills everyone who falls in love with one of you. The film treats a curse as weather. Most traditions treat it as a decision.
The other fiction is the way the film handles sacrifice and the cost of magic. Stories like this are built on an exchange: power for a price, usually paid in blood or in someone’s life. In actual practice, the cost of a working is more often time, attention, money, and change. That is less cinematic but more accurate.
Finally, there is the old fantasy of the one definitive book. The Book of Raven in the story is a real prop in the narrative, but no single text holds the key to anything. Most practitioners build their own references from many sources, and the most useful ones are the notebooks they fill themselves.
Why witch films keep coming back
Witch films have been popular for decades, and the cycle is not slowing. The theme sits at the intersection of family, power and the feminine, and it gives writers a way to talk about things that are hard to say outright: inherited trauma, who gets to be powerful, what a community does with someone it fears. A film like this lands because it makes a difficult conversation feel like a story.
If you want to look at where the witch image itself came from, the Museum of Witchcraft and Magic in Boscastle has an excellent collection on folklore and practice, and our own post on witches in pop culture traces the screen history.
Should you watch it?
If you loved the original, yes, with moderate expectations. The reviews suggest it is warm and watchable but not a masterpiece. If you are a practitioner, watch it for the family dynamics and the garden, and treat the spellwork as set dressing. The film is a good prompt for a conversation with the people in your life about what you pass on and what you hope to leave behind. That, after all, is the real magic in the Owens story.
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