LOS ANGELES – Evan Rachel Wood says she was not asked to return for Practical Magic 2, the Warner Bros. sequel to the 1998 cult film that reunites Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman, and she has not tried to conceal how that landed.
“I’m sad that that doesn’t get to exist,” Wood said in a recent interview, referring to the prospect of the original cast’s children returning alongside Bullock and Kidman as adults. “Especially for the fans.”
Joey King, 26, will play Kylie Owens, the role Wood originated as a child, in the sequel set for release September 11. Wood, 38, said the decision was a creative one rather than a personal one: the filmmakers chose an approach to the story that her return would not have served.
“I read the book,” Wood said, “and it seems like they’re not following the book. I think in the book it would have made sense to bring me back. I think in the way they’re redoing it and approaching it, it didn’t make sense.” She added that the original cast had bonded closely during filming: “We bonded with that cast so much as children. It was not in my control or my choice.”
The first Practical Magic, Griffin Dunne’s 1998 adaptation of Alice Hoffman’s novel of the same name, was not a success on its initial release. It opened modestly and received mixed reviews from critics who did not know what to do with a film that was simultaneously a romantic comedy, a supernatural thriller, a family drama, and a meditation on female power and community. It barely covered its costs in theatrical release.
What followed was stranger and more durable. The film found its audience on cable and home video and kept finding it, a cadence of rediscovery that produced, by the early 2000s, a genuine cult following among women who had seen it and kept seeing it. The Owens sisters, the aunts, the aunts’ house with its overgrown garden and particular light, these became reference points in a specific strain of female friendship and self-possession that subsequent films have found easy to cite and difficult to replicate.
Practical Magic 2 reunites Bullock and Kidman as sisters Sally and Gillian Owens, now facing a dark curse threatening the family’s legacy anew. Dianne Wiest and Stockard Channing reprise their roles as aunts Jet and Frances, a continuity of casting that gives the sequel a genuine lineage rather than merely a title. Nicole Kidman, who has remained one of the most consistently active major stars of her generation since the original, brings to the role the particular weight of a career that has not stood still.
The new generation added alongside King includes Maisie Williams, whose Arya Stark in Game of Thrones established her as one of the most recognizable faces in contemporary genre television. Lee Pace, Xolo Maridueña of Cobra Kai, and Solly McLeod complete the new additions. Kidman, speaking ahead of the September release, said that acting alongside King and Williams brought its own energy to a production already weighted by more than 25 years of fan expectation.
Practical Magic 2 is directed by Susanne Bier, the Danish filmmaker whose English-language work includes The Night Manager and Bird Box. Bier’s instinct for emotionally precise genre material makes her a reasonable choice for source material that has always operated at the edge between romantic drama and supernatural thriller. Whether the sequel can honor what the original generated inadvertently, the alchemy of a film that worked partly because it was not designed to become a franchise property, is the central question the September 11 release will answer.
Wood’s public statement adds transparency to what might otherwise have been a routine casting announcement. She did not suggest professional grievance. She said she was sad. That distinction matters in a conversation about a film whose original cast has spent more than two decades remaining genuinely fond of each other and of the thing they made.
Recasting of child roles when a story moves forward in time is common in franchise filmmaking. King, who has built a career across physically and emotionally demanding genre projects from Bullet Train to The Princess, carries genuine presence into the role. What Wood’s version of adult Kylie would have looked like remains a hypothetical.
Wood, who earned significant critical attention for her work in HBO’s Westworld and has spoken publicly on a range of industry matters in recent years, has not indicated what she is working on next. The Practical Magic 2 question, for her, appears closed rather than contested. The September 11 release date gives audiences what the cast could provide. It does not give them everything the cast might have been.
Sandra Bullock, who stepped away from acting for several years before returning to lead projects, and Kidman, whose recent years have included significant personal changes, bring to Practical Magic 2 the full weight of careers that neither could have predicted from the vantage point of 1998. Their reunion onscreen carries a specific register for audiences who watched them work together across a film that, whatever its initial critical reception, landed somewhere real for a very large number of people. That reality is what the sequel is betting on.
Practical Magic 2 opens September 11 from Warner Bros. Pictures. The film is rated PG-13.
