Practical Magic 2 opened nationwide on September 11, 2026, 28 years after the original. Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman reprise their roles as witch sisters Sally and Gillian Owens, joined by Joey King and Maisie Williams as the next generation, directed by Susanne Bier. It sits at 35% on Rotten Tomatoes and 46 on Metacritic. Even so, it's tracking for a $30–40 million domestic opening weekend against a $75 million budget — enough to open at No. 1 ahead of Spider-Man: Brand New Day. The original 1998 film opened to a 27% critic score and never earned back its own $75 million budget, making about $46.7–46.9 million domestically and $68.3 million worldwide. Critic Roger Ebert called it "too scary for children and too childish for adults" at the time. It later became a cult classic, with a 73% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes.

1. The Script Never Got Fixed (Variety's Todd Gilchrist, AwardsWatch's Sophia Ciminello)

These reviews are grading the movie on its own terms, not on nostalgia, and it doesn't hold up.

The sequel repeats the original's mistakes instead of fixing them. Todd Gilchrist writes in Variety that it "delivers a retread of the signposts that made the original a beloved fixture for certain moviegoers, while failing to correct the flaws that made everyone else all but forget it for three decades."

The script can't keep track of its own cast. Sophia Ciminello at AwardsWatch says the script "feels a bit unfocused" and drags whenever it isn't leaning on its stars. She points out the movie splits the new generation of sisters apart on purpose: Antonia is stuck at a hospital while Kylie and the others fly to England. That breaks the sister-bond theme the original leaned on.

Having three screenwriters didn't make the story clearer. Goldsman, Pritchett, and Marcel all worked on adapting Alice Hoffman's source novel, and Ciminello argues the three writers made the story messier, not clearer.

2. The Chemistry Is the Whole Point (IndieWire's Alison Foreman, PureWow)

Other critics say judging this movie on plot mechanics misses why people showed up.

Bullock and Kidman already did the hard part just by coming back. IndieWire critic Alison Foreman, who grades the film a B+, writes that "when it comes to conjuring the Owens back on the big screen, Bullock and Kidman have already done the hard part." She closes by telling readers to "live a little" and "let yourself fall for Practical Magic like you've never been hurt before."

PureWow's critic was skeptical going in, and the movie won her over. PureWow headlined its review "How 'Practical Magic 2' Won Over This Skeptic" and called the Bullock-Kidman dynamic "even more delightful this time around."

Other critics are saying the same thing. Goldderby's roundup of first reviews found critics consistently trashing the script while praising the cast, the same split showing up review after review.

3. This Is a Business Bet Warner Bros. Needs to Win (Comscore's Paul Dergarabedian, Box Office Theory's Shawn Robbins)

Box-office analysts aren't judging the movie at all — they're judging the strategy behind it, and a struggling studio is counting on it.

Warner Bros. needs this bet to pay off. The studio hasn't had a single $100 million domestic release in all of 2026 — its worst slump in 25 years. That's a reversal from 2025, when its bets on original stories were the ones succeeding.

Analysts say the strategy here is nostalgia, sold to a specific audience. Paul Dergarabedian of Comscore said the film "is going to benefit from obviously the nostalgia factor" as much as from being "a fun group night out." He separately called it "fast food." He said it's riding "the tail wind of summer," landing in what's normally a "fallow period" for box office around Labor Day.

Shawn Robbins of Box Office Theory says that audience is showing up. He said the film has "potential... to connect primarily with Gen X and Millennial women" regardless of the reviews, calling it "a solid weekend for the seasonally appropriate and demographically counter-programmed" release.

Bullock has already lived this exact split once. She's recalled thinking "people are going to love it" when the original came out — then "it got quiet." She remembered critics asking "how many women in a film do you need? How many tones do you need? What kind of film is this?" Those are nearly the same complaints Variety and AwardsWatch are making now.

Where This Lands

Critics grading Practical Magic 2 as a movie say the script never solves the problems that sank the original. Critics and fans grading it as a reunion say that's not the point, and the chemistry carries it anyway. Box-office analysts are grading something else entirely: whether the nostalgia strategy pays off for a studio that badly needs a hit, and a projected No. 1 opening weekend says it's working regardless of the reviews.

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