Some stories refuse to stay on the page. The Hollywood Reporter’s Beyond the Book column explores what happens when books make the leap to screen and beyond — unpacking what stayed, changed, how it was done and why it matters with the creatives who made it.
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[Warning: This story contains spoilers for Practical Magic 2 and The Book of Magic.]
The fact that a sequel to Practical Magic is happening came down to, well, magic.
Nearly 30 years after her book Practical Magic was published and adapted into the film starring Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman, author Alice Hoffman feels the timing for an onscreen revisit to the Owens sisters is serendipitous.
“I really think it happened because of Denise Di Novi, the producer, and Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman. They made it happen the first time, and they made it happen the second time,” Hoffman tells The Hollywood Reporter. Conversations about making another film took place over the years, she says, but nothing concrete ever came to fruition — until now.
“We’ve been talking about it for like a couple of years, like, ‘Oh, wouldn’t it be great?’ And then all of a sudden, it happened. It was like magic,” Hoffman tells THR.
However, Hoffman says what made now the “exact right time” for a sequel was a cultural shift that has taken place since the film’s 1998 release.
“When the first one came out, there really were no movies about women, and it was really kind of looked down upon,” Hoffman explains. “Magic was looked down upon. Sisterhood was looked down upon. Everything that it was about was looked down upon. And that has radically changed.”
As for what’s specifically changed, Hoffman smiles and says: “We weren’t as angry.”
‘The Book of Magic’ by Alice Hoffman
Simon & Schuster
“I think back then we didn’t have the kind of choices that we might have now,” she says. “I think there’s this idea of like a coven, and not necessarily witchery or anything, but just like your girlfriends, family, the people that you work with … we’re together in a different way [and] we’re more honest with each other. We’re more honest with facing things that face women.”
With new generations and an expanded awareness, the film will be welcomed and truly understood, explains Hoffman. “This generation is ready for this movie, and the past generations have been kind of waiting for it too.”
Stars Bullock and Kidman have been candid about how the film didn’t necessarily achieve great box office success but garnered a cult following over time. At the sequel‘s London premiere, Bullock said of the first movie’s criticism: “We weren’t [praised] when we came out — we were ridiculed for motherhood, sisterhood and too many tones.” For the 1998 film directed by Griffin Dunne, Hoffman took a hands-off approach with the adaptation process.
A former screenwriter herself, Hoffman says she deliberately kept her distance from adapting her own material. “It’s funny because I was a screenwriter for many years, but with this — with my own work — it’s definitely harder. … I think there was a vibe that was already kind of started, and I think it was good for me to be there, but not be there.”
However, for Practical Magic 2, Hoffman is listed as an exec producer. Involved or not, Hoffman is accepting of the book-to-screen changes, noting that a 400-page novel can’t transition to a 120-page screenplay intact.
“A book is going to be different than the movie. It just needs to be,” Hoffman said.
Resolving the Curse for Real This Time — and Writing Out Gary (and Other Love Interests)
Aidan Quinn in Practical Magic.
Warner Bros./courtesy Everett Collection
Despite being respectful of changes, a non-negotiable for Hoffman was for the film to finally address the Owens family curse, which wasn’t broken in the original film like fans might’ve thought: “The thing that I thought was the most important was for the curse to be resolved. … Many of us feel like we have historical family trauma and, in a way, are cursed because of what happened to our family before us. I really thought it was important [to convey] the idea that we can continue on despite that.”
That resolution comes at a cost for fans expecting Officer Gary Hallet (played by Aidan Quinn), to return in the second film. “For those who’ve read The Book of Magic, they know that Gary is no longer with us,” Hoffman notes. “He was a great actor and a wonderful character, but he wasn’t in that book. … They were in love, but it still wasn’t enough.”
In the original film, Bullock’s Sally faced heartbreak and welcomed love by the end of the film. In the sequel, Sally has endured heartbreak again and a new potential love interest (played by Lee Pace) — but with hesitations.
Meanwhile, in The Book of Magic, Gillian has her own love interest in a character named Ben. But in the sequel, he’s nonexistent. The character was another plot point of the many in the book that couldn’t work for the film, Hoffman says. “That’s one of the reasons I didn’t really want to write the screenplay because there was just too much,” she says. “You couldn’t have everything in it. And for certain characters [like Gillian], for them to be themselves and to be the one that is never tied down, things just had to be different.”
From left: Sandra Bullock and Lee Pace in Practical Magic 2.
Warner Bros. /Courtesy Everett Collection
Also left out of the film was Ariel Samantha Hardy, the romantic interest of Sally‘s daughter Antonia Owens (played by Maisie Williams), and Vincent Owens, the brother to Franny and Jet and the grandfather of Sally and Gillian. However, Vincent was also not featured in the original film.
Sally’s Reckoning With Her Magic
Much of the sequel’s emotional arc, per Hoffman, belongs to Sally finally making peace with the very power she’s spent decades suppressing. “In the other film, she’s just like, no magic. In this film, she’s like, ‘There’s magic, I’m not going near it because it’s going to cause trouble.’ … As Practical Magic 2 goes on, she’s more and more honest with other people about that. She knows she has the power and doesn’t want to use it, and by the end that starts to really change.”
In the sequel, as in the book, Bullock’s Sally is adamant about keeping her daughters entirely in the dark about magic, convinced it’d be the only way to keep them safe and live a normal life. But things take a turn when her daughter Kylie (Joey King), falls in love, only for her boyfriend Gideon (played by Xolo Maridueña) to be hit by a car and put in a coma all thanks to the Owens love curse.
From left: Joey King and Xolo Mariduena.
Warner Bros. /Courtesy Everett Collection
The ordeal forces Sally to admit the existence of their magical powers. But when King‘s Kylie decides to take matters into her own hands to rid the curse for good, she is confronted with danger, leaving Sally to rely on her magic to save her.
By the film’s close, Hoffman said, Sally has moved past denial for good. “It’s really accepting who you are, coming to terms with who you are and actually loving who you are,” Hoffman says of Sally’s journey in the sequel. “I think both of them [Sally and Gillian] have to kind of learn to accept all that’s good in themselves. And it takes Sally a little bit longer.”
Sally is also helped along by a new partner who believes in her and her gift. “She could do it with her sister, she could do it with her daughter, but also she was involved romantically with someone who believed in magic, and she didn’t have to deny it anymore. She didn’t have to pretend she was normal. Maybe what she had was better for her. … I don’t think she sees it as negative anymore.”
Sandra Bullock in Practical Magic 2.
Warner Bros. /Courtesy Everett Collection
Franny and Jet’s Final Act
The film’s most emotional moments belong to Jet — who dies early on after hearing a deathwatch beetle — and Franny (Stockard Channing), whose arc closes with her sacrifice to end the family curse for good. In The Book of Magic, Franny Owens sacrifices her life to finally break the 300-year-old ancestral love curse plaguing their family. Hoffman sees her choice as the culmination of the aunts’ role from the very start.
“Practical Magic starts with Franny and Jet doing anything they can for these two little girls with nobody, and that’s their lives, and they’re still willing to do that at the end,” she says. “It’s kind of the perfect ending, in a way, that now Sally and Gillian are able to take care of themselves — and they’re the ones that are going to have to watch out for the next generation.”
From left: Stockard Channing and Dianne Wiest.
Warner Bros. /Courtesy Everett Collection
An Owens Legacy: Why the Story Endures
Reflecting on why the original book and film have endured for nearly three decades, Hoffman credits its unvarnished depiction of female relationships. “It was a very honest portrayal of a relationship — that you could be angry, you could love the person, they would be there for you, they wouldn’t be there for you. … I don’t think we see that that often, especially among women, how important we are to each other.”
Many relate to the Owens family as well, even if who they identify with the most changes over time. “You feel like you’re Gillian when you’re young and wild and then you feel like you’re Sally when you have all these responsibilities and you can’t be yourself and you have to take care of everybody. Then you’re Franny when you’re kind of the grumpy older lady,“ she quips. “Jet seems to me somebody who finds peace, and it’s kind of what you’re looking for towards the end of your life.“
She adds, “I think it’s kind of a cycle, but I think it can go back and forth. You can feel like Franny one day and Sally the next. But they all together are all of us in a way.“
Exploring themes of sisterhood, the power of female relationships and self-acceptance through a family of witches is personal for Hoffman, who explains that her connection to witches predates Practical Magic entirely and continues in her next book, The Witches of Cambridge, out Sept. 8.
“I realize I’m always interested in witches. I was a little girl that dressed up as a witch on Halloween. I never wanted to be a princess,” Hoffman says.
Her new novel, set partly during the Salem witch trials era, was inspired by Hoffman’s time taking classes at Harvard Divinity School: “It started out as a term paper and wound up as a novel.”
Though Hoffman is ready to explore a new story of witches in her next novel, the release of Practical Magic 2 may not mean it’s a forever goodbye to the Owens family.
While the follow-up film provides a sense of finality, Hoffman isn’t ready to say goodbye: “I don’t think it ever closes. I don’t want it to.”
From left: Sandra Bullock, Maisie Williams, Joey King, Nicole Kidman in Practical Magic 2.
Warner Bros. /Courtesy Everett Collection
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Practical Magic 2 is now in theaters.
