Practical Magic 2 Producer Promises Story Will Be "Very Faithful" to Source Material

Denise Di Novi says the sequel will closely follow 2021's The Book of Magic.

By Nicole Drum

Last month, Warner Bros. Pictures delighted fans of Practical Magic when they announced that Practical Magic 2 was officially in the works with stars Nicole Kidman and Sandra Bullock returning. Now, producer Denise Di Novi says that the eagerly anticipated sequel is going to be going back to the books when it comes to continuing the story of the Owens sisters. Speaking with EW, Di Novi said that Practical Magic 2 will draw heavily from author Alice Hoffman's The Book of Magic, the 2021 sequel to 1995's Practical Magic upon which the first book was based.

"I think [fans are] going to be very pleased," Di Novi said. "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 Hoffmann'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 also explained that while Bullock and Kidman are returning for the sequel, they're "not 100 percent sure which other characters will return" — the original Practical Magic film also starred Stockard Channing, Dianne Wiest, Goran Visnjic, Evan Rachel Wood, Aidan Quinn, and Caprice Benedetti — but did reveal that the film is expected to be released sometime next year.

"It's going to be in 2025, but I'm not exactly sure when," Di Novi said. "We're just beginning the script, and Akiva Goldsman, who worked on the original and 10 million things since then, is writing the script."

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What is Practical Magic About?

Based on the 1995 novel of the same name by Hoffman, Practical Magic opened in theaters in 1998 and follows sisters Gillian and Sally who, following the tragic death of their parents, are raised by their aunts. As it turns out, the girls descend from a long line of witches with a curse following their ancestry thanks to a spell cast that would doom any man that falls in love with a woman from the Owens family.

Fans of the film have been eager for a sequel for years. Hoffman's Practical Magic series of novels not only continued the story with 2021's The Book of Magic, but there were two additional prequel books as well, 2017's The Rules of Magic and 2000's Magic Lessons. Outside of the books, Practical Magic was also the subject of various planned television revivals and a reboot pilot was even shot for CBS in 2004 while a prequel series went into development in 2010 for ABC Family, but neither project was picked up. In 2019, another prequel project was in the works at Max, but it also didn't come to fruition.

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