Box Office: ‘Practical Magic 2’ Fizzles With $30 Million Debut
"Practical Magic 2" topped the North American box office in its opening weekend, but its $30 million debut fell at the low end of expectations for the long-awaited witchy sequel starring Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman. Warner Bros. had hoped nostalgia and star power would drive a strong launch, but with a $75 million production budget and tens of millions more spent on marketing, the modest opening raises questions about the film's path to profitability, especially as it follows a string of recent studio misfires.
Adjusted for inflation, the sequel's domestic haul closely mirrors the $13 million opening of the original 1998 film, which flopped initially before becoming a cult classic. Overseas takings added just $16 million from 77 markets, bringing the global weekend total to $46 million. The film earned a poor 36% on Rotten Tomatoes but a warmer "B+" CinemaScore from audiences, who skewed towards older women, suggesting it connected with existing fans but struggled to attract younger viewers. It still knocked "Spider-Man: Brand New Day" off the top spot after six weekends, with that film's $935 million domestic total set to overtake "Star Wars: The Force Awakens" as the highest-grossing film in North American box office history.
- "Practical Magic 2" opened at No. 1 with a disappointing $30 million
- Sequel's inflation-adjusted debut matches the original 1998 flop
- "Spider-Man: Brand New Day" nears all-time domestic box office record
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Practical Magic 2 is a supernatural drama sequel to the 1998 film Practical Magic, in which sisters played by Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman come from a family of witches. The follow-up was released almost three decades later, again starring Bullock and Kidman, and was made by Warner Bros, the studio behind it. It's a "legacy sequel" — a new film aimed at both original fans and newcomers — and one of several such nostalgia-driven follow-ups Hollywood studios have leaned on in recent years to draw audiences into cinemas.
The box office, meaning ticket sales, is closely watched in the film industry as an early sign of whether a movie will make back its costs and turn a profit for the studio. Figures are usually reported for a film's opening weekend in North America (the US and Canada), then combined with takings from cinemas abroad to give a global total. Analysts also compare a film's reviews from critics with audience reaction scores, since the two can differ and both influence how a film performs over time.
For context, the original Practical Magic in 1998 was itself a box office disappointment on release before gradually becoming a cult favourite over the years, watched and rewatched long after cinemas. That history matters to how the sequel's performance is being judged now, since a slow start doesn't necessarily predict a film's longer-term fortunes.