In 1993, Walt Disney Pictures released a movie titled Hocus Pocus. It was a fantasy-comedy film about three witches who are inadvertently revived by a teenage boy on Halloween night in Salem, Massachusetts, the place famous for its infamous witch trials. Hocus Pocus starred Bette Midler, Sarah Jessica Parker and Kathy Najimy as the three witches and although it wasn’t neither a critical (it received mixed reviews) nor a commercial success (it supposedly lost around $16.5 million) for Disney initially, frequent reruns have enabled future audiences to rediscover te movie and turn it into a true Halloween classic.
The movie’s legacy today is quite remarkable, seeing how it wasn’t far from a flop back in 1993. Today, it’s somewhat of a cult classic and one of the most popular Halloween movies of all times, despite being aimed at younger audiences.
Talks of a sequel began back in 2014 but they were initially debunked. Rumors persisted for several years and in 2018, a book titled Hocus Pocus and the All-New Sequel was released, continuing the film’s story. It was still not what the fans wanted and demands for a cinematic sequel continued to appear sporadically.
In October 2019, however, Disney officially confirmed that a sequel was in the works to premiere exclusively on Disney+. Bette Midler, Sarah Jessica Parker and Kathy Najimy all expressed their interest in reprising their roles from the first movie, but Disney was silent about it for a while. Jen D’Angelo was hired as the writer, with Adam Shankman directing; Shankman was replaced with Anne Fletcher in April 2021, but he stated that he would still be involved with the movie in an unknown capacity in May 2021. That same month, Bette Midler, Sarah Jessica Parker and Kathy Najimy were confirmed to reprise their roles, with production beginning during the summer of 2021.
Hocus Pocus 2 is set to premiere during the fall season of 2022 and luckily for all Apple users, it is going to be available exclusively on Disney+. All you have to do is download the app on your Apple device and wait for a while; it’s definitely going to be worth it!