Practical Magic 2 Review: Sequel Misses Original's Charm — SkimNews
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- Practical Magic 2 reunites Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman as the Owens sisters 28 years after the 1998 original, based on Alice Hoffman's 2021 novel "The Book of Magic."
- Joey King's Kylie travels to the UK — where ancestor Maria Owens was born — to break the family curse after her love Gideon (Xolo Maridueña) suffers a life-threatening accident.
- The review criticizes the sequel for lacking the original's character-driven romance, noting King gets no chemistry-building time with Maridueña before he slips into an onscreen coma, while Nicole Kidman and Maisie Williams are relegated to side roles.
- The film runs 2 hours 10 minutes, is rated PG-13, distributed by Warner Bros., and releases September 10, 2026, with a screenplay by Akiva Goldsman, Georgia Pritchett, and Kelly Marcel.
- The iconic Owens seaside house — originally a San Juan Island shell in the first film — gets only about 15 minutes of screen time as the setting shifts to the England countryside.
- Sandra Bullock has teased a potential trilogy-concluding third installment to "pass the torch," while Hoffman's unused prequel novels "The Rules of Magic" (2017) and "Magic Lessons" (2020) offer further source material for the franchise.
Why it matters: For a 28-year-awaited sequel, the film functions less as a standalone and more as franchise infrastructure — Bullock has already teased a trilogy-concluding third film, and Hoffman's two unused prequel novels offer further source material. The PG-13, 2-hour-10-minute runtime targets broad audiences, though critics note Kidman gets sidelined despite being half the original's draw.
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