The sequel to the cult classic film was first announced in June 2024, with Bullock and Kidman slated to return and produce. Susanne Bier, who worked with Bullock on Bird Box and with Kidman on The Undoing and The Perfect Couple, is slated to direct. Akiva Goldsman, who co-wrote the original screenplay, will write the sequel. Producer Denise Di Novi is also set to return. As for the other stars (Stockard Channing and Dianne Wiest as the magical aunts, Aidan Quinn as Bullock’s love interest, etc.) Di Novi told Entertainment Weekly last year that they’re “not 100 percent sure which characters will return.”
She did, however, say that she thinks the fans will be pleased with the continuation, an adaptation of Alice Hoffman’s novel The Book Of Magic. In it, three generations of Owens women join together to break the family’s curse. In the original movie, that curse (that any man an Owens woman loved would die) seemed to have been broken, so either the sequel plot will go in a different direction, or Aidan Quinn’s character is in trouble. Perhaps that would be a good way to write the actor out of the equation—but cross your fingers that the production can entice Evan Rachel Wood to return as Bullock’s daughter!
“We’re going to be very faithful. We’re cognizant to how important those characters and that movie are to so many people. We’re not going to reinvent the wheel. We’re going to draw from Alice Hoffman’s books, as the first movie did, and we’re going to be true to the chronology of how many years later it is,” Di Novi promised to EW. In another conversation with People in 2024, she added, “There’s a joyousness to that movie, and there’s such beautiful themes of sisterhood and family and acceptance, tolerance, love. Just the title that Alice Hoffman, the amazing author, thought of that’s now become part of the vernacular of Practical Magic is that there’s magic in daily life, in love, in family, in sisterhood. It’s magical, and we all have our gifts, and women have very particular and specific gifts. We really want to honor all of that.”
