Practical Magic 2 is actually happening and Nicole Kidman and Sandra Bullock are back as the Owens sisters

The original Practical Magic made $25 million at the box office in 1998 against a $75 million budget. Critics called it a mess. Two decades later, it is a film people press into each other's hands and say just watch it. That arc is exactly why the sequel announcement has landed the way it has.

Practical Magic 2 releases September 11, 2026, directed by Susanne Bier and written by Akiva Goldsman, Georgia Pritchett and Kelly Marcel. It is based on Alice Hoffman's 2021 novel The Book of Magic, set 25 years after the first film. Three generations of Owens women now face the family curse together, and from the trailer it is clear the film goes somewhere darker than the original.

The thing people are most pleased about is the cast. Nicole Kidman and Sandra Bullock both return as the Owens sisters. Dianne Wiest and Stockard Channing are also back. This is a 1998 ensemble showing up complete in 2026, which is rarer than it sounds and the kind of thing that makes people feel like the original was worth caring about all along.

The new cast adds Joey King, Xolo Maridueña, Maisie Williams, Lee Pace and Solly McLeod. King plays Kylie, Sally's daughter, who has apparently been kept sheltered from her family's magic her whole life. Her boyfriend, played by Maridueña, gets on the wrong side of the curse. She turns to dark magic to save him, which is where things get complicated.

The trailer gives you midnight margaritas, candles that light by blowing on them, the iconic white house, and the very clear sense that someone has made this film with real affection for what the original was trying to do.

The nostalgia side of the internet is already there. Whether the film itself earns that reception is what September will tell us.