At CinemaCon in Las Vegas on Tuesday ET, practical magic was not just a title on a screen. It was the feeling in the room as Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman revisited a story that clearly still lives in public memory, and in their own.
What did Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman reveal about the sequel?
Kidman greeted Bullock’s question with the line that has now become the sequel’s calling card: “We come to this place for magic. ” Bullock answered with her own version of homecoming, saying returning felt “like we came back to a home that we once lived in. ”
Their appearance closed Warner Bros. ’ CinemaCon panel with a first look at Practical Magic 2 and a reminder of the 1998 romantic fantasy that began the story. Kidman said audiences can expect “midnight margaritas, jumping off the roof and also have our past catching up with us. ” She added that the sisters’ destinies, and family, remain at the center of the story. Bullock said the production rebuilt the original house on the cliff and filled it with old and new characters, while also bringing Alice Hoffman’s Book of Magic to life.
That mix of nostalgia and renewal is the sequel’s emotional core. The film returns to Sally and Gillian Owens, played by Bullock and Kidman, within a multi-generational family of witches cursed to be loveless for centuries. Their task is simple only in outline: confront dark secrets and sacrifice for each other in order to break a spell.
Why does Practical Magic 2 feel like more than a sequel?
The trailer suggests the new film is built around familiar objects and uneasy inheritance. The Owens house is back, and so is the sense that home is never fully settled. A cup stirs itself. The sisters joke about the deaths that follow people they love. The tone shifts between humor and dread, which is part of what made the original film endure for so many viewers.
There is also a broader human thread here: the idea that family can be both shelter and burden. In this case, the burden is literal, tied to a curse, but the emotional logic is recognizable. The sisters are adults with pasts that still shape their choices, and the sequel uses that tension to frame romance, grief, loyalty, and the costs of belonging. That is where practical magic becomes more than a fantasy premise. It becomes a story about returning to the places and relationships that define people, even when those places are complicated.
Susanne Bier directs the sequel, taking over from Griffin Dunne, who directed the original film. Akiva Goldsman, who co-wrote the first movie, returned to write the script with Georgia Pritchett. The cast also brings back Dianne Wiest and Stockard Channing, while adding Joey King, Lee Pace, Maisie Williams, Xolo Maridueña and Solly McLeod. The film is produced by Bullock, Kidman and Denise Di Novi, and it is set to open in theaters worldwide on September 11.
How is the film expanding its family story?
The sequel widens the circle around Sally and Gillian. In the trailer, Sally is shown with adult daughters who are beginning lives of their own, while Gillian has settled into a quieter life with a black cat. Trouble arrives anyway, pulling the sisters out of their town and into a more dramatic assignment tied to the family’s past.
That shift matters because the story is no longer only about two sisters trying to survive a curse. It is also about what they pass on. The younger generation gives the sequel a different emotional weight, and the return of the aunts Frances and Jet Owens keeps the family structure intact. The film seems designed to let memory and inheritance share the frame with magic and spectacle.
What should audiences expect when the film opens in September ET?
For now, the message from the CinemaCon presentation is clear: the sequel is leaning into recognition, but not standing still. It promises romance, family, magic and mayhem, with a cast that bridges the original film and a new generation. If the trailer is any guide, the appeal is not only in the spells or the visuals, but in the comfort of seeing these characters together again.
And that is why the rebuilt house on the cliff matters. It is a set piece, but it also works as a metaphor for the film itself: something familiar reconstructed so viewers can step back inside and find old emotions in a new arrangement. By the time the sisters return to that house, practical magic carries a different meaning — not just enchantment, but the uneasy, stubborn act of making family work again.
