Practical Magic 2 (2026)

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About

The Owens sisters return, twenty-eight years on, to face the family curse they thought they had broken.

Practical Magic 2 is the sequel to Practical Magic (1998) and is based on The Book of Magic, the 2021 novel by Alice Hoffman that closes her Practical Magic series. Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman reprise their roles as Sally and Gillian Owens, with Stockard Channing and Dianne Wiest back as their eccentric aunts, Franny and Jet.

For generations, any man who falls in love with an Owens woman has been doomed to die, the legacy of a spell cast by their ancestor Maria Owens. Sally and Gillian believed they had ended it, until Sally's second husband dies soon after their wedding. Heartbroken, Sally turns her back on magic altogether and casts one last spell so that her daughters, Kylie and Antonia, grow up knowing nothing of it.

Years later, the death of Aunt Jet brings the family back together, and Kylie's boyfriend Gideon is left in a coma shortly after she tells him she loves him. Furious that her mother kept the family's history from her, Kylie takes an old spell book and follows its visions to England, to the village where Maria Owens was born. Sally and Gillian go after her, enlisting the help of Ian Wright, an academic who studies the history of magic, and find that someone in the village has his own reasons for wanting the Owens women there.

Details

Director: Susanne Bier

Writer/Screenplay: Akiva Goldsman, Georgia Pritchett, Kelly Marcel (screenplay); based on The Book of Magic by Alice Hoffman

Producer: Denise Di Novi, Sandra Bullock, Nicole Kidman


Running time: 130 minutes

Certificate: 12A

Budget: $75 million (net)

Box office: $84 million worldwide (as of September 24, 2026)

Genre: Romantic fantasy, Comedy-drama

Released: September 10, 2026 (US), September 11, 2026 (UK)

Music Composer: Rupert Gregson-Williams

Cast

Soundtrack

  • Caught Myself Believing performed by Bleachers
  • Blur performed by Aldae
  • And So It Goes (Billy Joel cover) performed by Brandi Carlile

Franchise

Related

Trivia

  • The film is Sandra Bullock's third theatrical sequel, after Speed 2: Cruise Control (1997) and Miss Congeniality 2: Armed and Fabulous (2005). She had avoided sequels for more than twenty years before returning to the Owens family.
  • Although the Owens family home is in Massachusetts, the film was shot in England, at Warner Bros. Studios Leavesden in Hertfordshire. The Hamptons scenes were filmed in Worcester Park, south London, dressed as a seaside village.
  • It is Joey King's second film alongside Nicole Kidman, after A Family Affair (2024).
  • The release was brought forward a week, from September 18 to September 10, 2026.

Critical Reception

Practical Magic 2 received mixed reviews. Critics were broadly warm about the chemistry between Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman, and about the chance to see Stockard Channing and Dianne Wiest back as the aunts, but many found the plot mechanical and felt the sequel relied on nostalgia for the 1998 original rather than finding a reason of its own to exist. Audiences were considerably kinder than critics, with a strong audience score on Rotten Tomatoes and a B+ CinemaScore.

Reviews

  • Rotten Tomatoes: 36% from 163 critics, with an average rating of 5.0 out of 10. The Popcornmeter audience score is 91%, from more than 2,500 verified ratings.
  • Metacritic: 44 out of 100, based on 41 critics, indicating "mixed or average" reviews.
  • Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of B+ on an A+ to F scale.
  • IMDb users give the film an average rating of 6.3 out of 10.
  • Tim Robey of The Daily Telegraph found it watchable but inessential, while Nikki Gemmell of The Australian gave it three out of five, saying fans would leave satisfied even if the film lacked the energy to become a talking point.

Links

Production

Warner Bros. Pictures announced the sequel in June 2024, with Akiva Goldsman, a writer on the 1998 film, returning to the script. Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman entered talks to star and produce alongside Denise Di Novi, and Kidman confirmed a few days later that both would return. In July 2024 Di Novi said the story would adapt The Book of Magic, the final novel in Alice Hoffman's series.

Susanne Bier was announced as director in May 2025, with Georgia Pritchett joining Goldsman on the screenplay; Kelly Marcel also shares the writing credit. Joey King joined the cast the same month, and in July 2025 Dianne Wiest and Stockard Channing were confirmed as returning, with Lee Pace, Maisie Williams, Xolo Maridueña and Solly McLeod joining.

Principal photography began in July 2025 at Warner Bros. Studios Leavesden, with Simon Duggan as cinematographer, and wrapped on September 13, 2025. The film is produced by Alcon Entertainment, Di Novi Pictures, Fortis Films and Blossom Films.

Release

Practical Magic 2 had its European premiere at the Odeon Luxe Leicester Square in London on August 26, 2026. Warner Bros. released it in cinemas in the United States and Canada on September 10, 2026, and in the United Kingdom on September 11, 2026, where the BBFC rated it 12A for threat, violence, injury detail, sex, language and references to sexual violence.

Box Office

The film took $12.5 million on its first day in North America, including $4.7 million from Thursday previews, and opened to $30 million. That was below pre-release projections of around $40 million, but it was still enough to knock Spider-Man: Brand New Day off the top of the US box office after six weeks. A further $16 million overseas gave it a $46 million global opening.

As of September 24, 2026, it had grossed $54 million in the United States and Canada and $30 million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $84 million against a reported net budget of $75 million.

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