Twenty-eight years is a long time to wait for a sequel nobody greenlit at the time because the first film flopped. Practical Magic opened in 1998 to middling business and worse reviews, then spent a quarter century becoming the kind of movie people rewatch every October until it turns into a personality trait. That slow-burn afterlife is the entire reason Practical Magic 2 exists — and this weekend it converted into roughly $28 million and the number one spot.
It also did something that had started to feel structural: it ended Spider-Man: Brand New Day‘s run at the top, which had held for six consecutive weekends.
The Numbers
The Warner Bros. and New Line release pulled $4.7 million from Thursday previews, $13 million on Friday, and landed in the $28 to $30 million range across 4,146 theatres. Against a reported $75 million production budget, that is a functional opening rather than a triumphant one — it needs legs, and the audience data suggests it might have them.
| Film | Weekend gross | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Practical Magic 2 | ~$28M | Opening weekend, 4,146 theatres |
| Spider-Man: Brand New Day | $8.7M | Seventh weekend, $935M domestic |
| The Odyssey | $8.1M | Now Universal’s highest-grossing film unadjusted |
| Coyote vs. Acme | $6.3M | Third weekend |
| Runner | $6M | Opening weekend |
Worth flagging what is happening below the top line. Spider-Man: Brand New Day sitting at $935 million domestic in its seventh weekend is a historic run, and The Odyssey quietly becoming Universal’s biggest unadjusted earner is the kind of milestone that would lead the column in a normal week.
The Critics Hated It. The Audience Did Not.
The split here is stark enough to be its own story.
- Critics: 37% on Rotten Tomatoes
- Audience: 93%
- CinemaScore: B+
- PostTrak: 4.5 out of 5
There is a neat symmetry in this. The 1998 original was also panned, and it also earned a warmer reception from the people who actually bought tickets — its CinemaScore was a B, so the sequel has technically improved on it. Whatever reviewers are measuring when they watch an Owens family movie, it is not what the audience showed up for.
Who came
Opening-night crowds skewed 75% female. Moviegoers aged 35 to 49 gave it an A-, while the under-35 crowd landed at a B, and more than half the opening audience was over 35.
That demographic profile is both the film’s strength and its ceiling. Warner Bros. successfully mobilised the millennial women who made the original a cult object, and did it efficiently. But a legacy sequel that cannot recruit younger viewers has a short tail, and September has no holiday weekend to lean on.
What They Actually Made
Susanne Bier directed, working from a script by Akiva Goldsman, Georgia Pritchett and Kelly Marcel, adapted from Alice Hoffman’s 2021 novel The Book of Magic. Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman return as Sally and Gillian Owens, with Dianne Wiest and Stockard Channing back as aunts Jet and Franny — which is the single most important casting decision in the film, because the aunts were always the reason people loved the original.
The new generation brings Joey King as Kylie Owens and Maisie Williams as Antonia, alongside Lee Pace, Xolo Maridueña and Solly McLeod. The premise picks up 25 years on: Kylie discovers unsettling powers and buried family history, and the Owens women travel to the UK to confront the origin of their curse.
Production ran from July to September 2025 at Warner Bros. Studios Leavesden, with location work in Devon and London — which explains the transatlantic plot, and is a reasonable trade for the UK production incentives.
The Bigger Picture Is Soft
A $28 million opening leading the chart is a fine result for one film and a mediocre signal for the season. Post-summer September has become the industry’s dead zone, and this weekend did not break the pattern so much as demonstrate it: a mid-budget sequel with two enormous stars took the top spot with a number that would have finished third in July.
The encouraging read is that Practical Magic 2 doubled the original’s opening, and legacy sequels aimed at women in their thirties and forties have repeatedly outperformed their tracking when the affection is genuine rather than manufactured. The 93% audience score and 4.5 PostTrak are the kind of exit data that produces small weekend-to-weekend drops.
The discouraging read is the age skew. Films that open old rarely expand young, and October brings competition.
Final Verdict
This is a win for Warner Bros., with an asterisk. Ending a six-week Spider-Man run is a genuine achievement and the marketing clearly worked. But $28 million on a $75 million budget means the film needs to hold well for four or five weekends and travel internationally to get comfortably into profit, and it is doing that with the worst reviews of any wide release in the top five.
The number to watch is next weekend’s drop. Anything under 45% confirms that the audience score is real and the word of mouth is carrying it. Anything steeper means the nostalgia audience showed up all at once, spent its money, and went home — which is exactly what happened to the first film, and how this whole story started.
