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The producer of 1998's Practical Magic, Denise Di Novi, exclusively told Entertainment Weekly that the upcoming sequel will be based on Alice Hoffman's 2021 book The Book of Magic.
The original film was also based on Hoffman's 1995 novel of the same name. Since then, two other books have been published, The Rules of Magic in 2017 and Magic Lessons in 2020. Both served as prequels to Practical Magic.
Magic Lessons follows the origin story of the first Owens woman to set foot in the New World, Maria Owens. She was also the first witch to cast a curse on her own family in 1620 to “beware of love.”
The Owens sisters are coming back… soon
The Rules of Magic follows the story of Susanna Owens and her three children: headstrong Franny (played by Stockard Channing in the original film), shy Jet (Dianne Wiest) and charismatic Vincent.
The upcoming sequel, based on The Book of Magic, will deal with the events years after the 1998 film.
“I think [fans are] going to be very pleased. We're going to be very faithful. We're cognizant to how important those characters and that movie are to so many people. We're not going to reinvent the wheel,” Di Novi said.
“We're going to draw from Alice Hoffman's books, as the first movie did, and we're going to be true to the chronology of how many years later it is,” she added.
Academy Award winners Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman, who played sisters Sally and Gillian Owens, are returning to produce and reprise their roles. However, the producer noted that they're not “100 percent sure which characters will return.”
Bullock was most recently seen in two movies in 2022, the action adventure comedy with Channing Tatum The Lost City and Bullet Train. The actress currently has one project in production, the English-language remake of the French thriller Le convoyeur, Vigilance.
Kidman most recently starred in the Netflix romantic comedy with Zac Efron, A Family Affair. The actress was also recently honored with the AFI Lifetime Achievement Award, the first Australian to receive it.
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Will the Practical Magic cast reunite for the sequel?
Channing and Wiest played the sisters' Aunt Franny and Aunt Jet, respectively. Goran Visnjic played Gillian's ex-boyfriend Jimmy Angelov and Aidan Quinn played Gary Hallet, Sally's love interest. Evan Rachel Wood played Sally's daughter Kylie and Caprice Benedetti played Maria Owens.
Di Novi insisted that the production team will “be respectful to the characters, story, and locations,” in both the movies and Hoffman's books. She added that the sequel's target release date will be sometime next year.
“It's going to be in 2025, but I'm not exactly sure when,” the producer added.
“We're just beginning the script, and Akiva Goldsman, who worked on the original and 10 million things since then, is writing the script,” she continued.
The entertainment website asked Warner Bros. for comment since the studio teased the development of the sequel last month.
Di Novi has been a veteran producer with decades of experience. Before Practical Magic, she has produced several notable films such as the 1988 cult classic Heathers, 1990's Edward Scissorhands and 1993's The Nightmare Before Christmas. Since the 1998 movie, she has 2005's The Sisterhood of Traveling Pants and its 2008 sequel and both versions of Little Women in 1994 and 2019.
If the production team will follow The Book of Magic as faithfully as they can, it will be set at least two decades after the first movie. In the book, Sally's daughters are already adults. Both Aunt Franny and Aunt Jet are still around. Sally now works as the director of the Owens Library while Gillian works just a few hours away in Cambridge. The little girls in the movie are now young women, Kylie and Antonia.
Hoffman's latest book in the Practical Magic series has most of the characters we met in the first movie. However, there are new ones as well. I'm looking forward to finding out who they'll cast as the aunts' long-lost brother Vincent and the heavily tattooed Englishman Ian.
