“Practical Magic 2” is drawing attention this week for exactly the reason you’d hope: watching Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman share a screen again feels less like a sequel and more like running into old friends at a bar you both used to love. Here’s what the movie’s actually about, why it took almost three decades to happen, and why I’m still thinking about the tarot reader from the premiere.

The wait comes after years of on-and-off rumblings about a follow-up to “Practical Magic,” the 1998 cult favorite that critics originally shrugged at and audiences quietly turned into a Halloween-season staple anyway. Warner Bros. finally made it official, and now the Owens sisters are back on the big screen, margaritas in hand.

What Practical Magic 2 Is Actually About

Set roughly twenty-five years after the first film, “Practical Magic 2“ finds Sally Owens settled into a quiet life as a librarian, while her sister Gillian is still doing exactly what Gillian does best: drifting through town, charming everyone in her path, and mostly avoiding real responsibility. That peace doesn’t last. Sally’s daughter Kylie starts digging into the family’s history and stumbles onto something nobody wanted found — the real, buried origin of the Owens magic. Her own powers start waking up right alongside that discovery, and not in a gentle way.

That sends the Sally and Gillian from their house in Massachusetts across the ocean to the United Kingdom to confront where all of this actually started, and to try to protect the next generation before history repeats itself. It’s a bigger, more mythology-heavy story than the original, and it leans hard on the 2021 novel “The Book of Magic” by Alice Hoffman, which closes out her Owens family series.

Twenty-Eight Years Is a Long Time to Sit With a Curse

It’s genuinely wild to sit with the math here. The original “Practical Magic” came out in 1998. Warner Bros. didn’t announce a sequel was even in development until June 2024, with Akiva Goldsman writing the script and Bullock and Kidman circling to reprise their roles and produce alongside original producer Denise Di Novi. Kidman confirmed she was in days later, director Susanne Bier came aboard in May 2025, and cameras actually rolled that July at Warner Bros. Studios Leavesden in England, with additional filming in Devon and London. The shoot wrapped that September. All told, that’s basically 28 years between movies and about fourteen months from a locked director to a wrapped shoot — which honestly explains why this thing feels less like a quickie cash-in and more like something people actually cared about getting right.

Meet the New Owens Women: Joey King and Maisie Williams

The sequel hands the next generation over to Joey King as Kylie, Sally’s elder daughter, and Maisie Williams as Antonia, her younger sister — both stepping into roles that were originated by Evan Rachel Wood and Alexandra Artrip in the 1998 film. King gets the meatier assignment by a mile. Kylie is the one whose curiosity cracks the story open, and reviewers have singled King out for actually landing the emotional chaos of a young woman getting flooded with feelings and untrained magic at the same time, especially since her own mother spent decades teaching her to bottle everything up.

Williams doesn’t get the same runway, unfortunately. Antonia is written as a doctor, and a chunk of the movie sidelines her in a hospital storyline that keeps her apart from the rest of the family for long stretches. It’s a shame, because the whole point of bringing King and Williams in was to hand them the torch — Bullock has talked openly about her and Kidman eventually stepping back and letting this new pair carry a potential third film. Based on how this one’s structured, that torch-passing still has some work to do.

The Family Curse Nobody Ever Got to Outrun

For anyone who needs the refresher: the Owens curse is the reason every man who falls for an Owens woman meets a bad end, a rule baked in generations back and one the aunts spend the first film treating as an unshakable fact of life. Sally spent her whole arc in “Practical Magic” trying to outsmart it by refusing to fall in love at all, which obviously didn’t work out the way she planned.

“Practical Magic 2” picks that thread back up and actually goes looking for where the curse came from in the first place, instead of just living around it the way the family always has. Kylie’s digging is what forces the issue, and it’s what pulls everyone back into the same old family patterns — secrecy, protectiveness, and generations of women quietly absorbing pain so the next one doesn’t have to. Whether the movie fully pays that off is up for debate, but it’s clearly trying to close a loop the original never touched.

The Bullock-Kidman Chemistry Is Still Doing the Heavy Lifting

Here’s the part that isn’t up for debate: put Bullock and Kidman in a kitchen together and something just clicks. Critics who’ve already seen it are pointing to their scenes as the reason to buy a ticket at all, describing the two of them slipping back into sisterly ease — teasing each other about men, blending up midnight margaritas, picking up a rhythm that reads like it never actually stopped. Nearly three decades later, they’ve gone from rising stars to legitimate icons, and somehow that makes their scenes together land even softer. It’s the kind of chemistry that can’t really be written; it’s just two people who know exactly how to play off one another, and the movie is smart enough to keep pointing the camera at it.

Underneath the Spells, It’s a Movie About Letting Go

Strip away the herb gardens and the family grimoire and what you actually have is a story about people who’ve spent their whole lives bracing for the worst, finally being asked to put that down. Sally’s entire personality was built around control and caution after everything she survived the first time around, and this movie keeps pushing her to loosen that grip so her daughters have room to become who they’re supposed to be. Gillian’s arc runs the same direction from a different angle — someone who’s coasted on charm for decades finally being asked to grow up a little.

It’s not subtle about it, and it doesn’t need to be. Every generation in this family has carried grief, guilt, and a curse they didn’t ask for, and “Practical Magic 2” is basically asking all of them the same question: what happens if you finally set it down instead of handing it to your kids? That’s a genuinely moving idea even when the plot around it gets a little overstuffed.

I Went to the Early Screening, and Yes, It Was Actually Magical

Full disclosure since it’s the honest thing to do: I caught “Practical Magic 2” at an early screening, and whoever planned the event clearly understood the assignment. Everyone walked out with goodie bags stuffed with branded shirts and totes, the kind of stuff you actually end up wearing instead of shoving in a drawer. There was a tarot reader set up in the lobby pulling cards for anyone curious enough to sit down, which is such a perfectly on-brand touch for this franchise that I have to assume someone on the marketing team is a genuine witch. People were laughing, comparing pulls, trading margarita recommendations before the lights even went down. It was one of those screenings where the room felt like it wanted to be there, and that energy carried straight into the movie itself.

So, Is Practical Magic 2 Worth It?

“Practical Magic 2” isn’t a clean, tidy sequel, and it doesn’t try to be. It’s overstuffed, it hands its future stars less room than it should, and the plot occasionally trips over its own ambition. But it’s also carried by two actresses who genuinely love working together, a curse storyline that finally gets some closure, and a message about releasing old pain that lands harder than you’d expect from a movie with this much eyeliner and candlelight. Twenty-eight years is a long time to wait, but the sisters showed up, and honestly, so did the magic.

“Practical Magic 2” is in theaters now.