Practical Magic 2 Opens at No. 1, Ending Spider-Man’s Six-Week Box Office Streak

LOS ANGELES — The opening was always going to be about Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman, not the curse.

Warner Bros.’ “Practical Magic 2” earned $13 million domestically on Friday, including $4.7 million in Thursday previews, putting the supernatural sequel on course for an opening weekend of roughly $30 million across 4,146 North American theaters. The figure is slightly below the studio’s initial estimate of $30 million to $35 million, but it is enough to claim the top spot at the domestic box office and end the six-week run that Spider-Man: Brand New Day had assembled since its record-breaking August debut.

The CinemaScore coming out of Friday night was B+. That number, more than any single-day gross, defines what the film’s commercial future actually looks like.

A B+ on a sequel with a built-in audience signals satisfaction without enthusiasm; the audience got what they came for, at a cost that will slow repeat viewings. The original “Practical Magic,” released in October 1998, closed its theatrical run with $46.7 million domestically before finding the second life on cable and home video that turned it into something closer to a cult property. Its audience did not discover it in theaters so much as it happened upon the film over years of repeat viewings on Lifetime and TNT. The sequel arrives 28 years later asking that same audience to come back to a theater, and Friday’s attendance suggests a meaningful portion of them did.

Spider-Man: Brand New Day had dominated the domestic chart since its August opening, at one point threatening Titanic’s all-time global record before the superhero market began to normalize in late August. Six consecutive weeks at No. 1 is an unusual achievement for any Marvel film and speaks to a theatrical marketplace that had been compressed into a single dominant choice for the better part of the summer. The franchise that dislodged it is not a superhero sequel, not an animated title, and not a franchise with a recent theatrical track record. That context shapes what “Practical Magic 2” has accomplished, whatever the final weekend number is.

Director Susanne Bier, working from a screenplay by Akiva Goldsman, sets the sequel 25 years after the first film. Bullock’s Sally Owens now has two daughters, played by Joey King and Maisie Williams, who have their own command of the family’s witchy inheritance. When King’s character uncovers dark secrets embedded in the Owens curse, the women must confront what the family has been carrying and what it will cost to put it down. Dianne Wiest and Stockard Channing return as the aunts, and Lee Pace, Xolo Maridueña and Solly McLeod fill out the new male roles. The film’s center of gravity, by the consensus of reviews, belongs to the two leads.

The Hollywood Reporter’s review described the result as “harmless, but hardly enchanting” and identified the chemistry between Bullock and Kidman as the single best reason to watch. The studio understood, in greenlighting the sequel, that the premise was the two women together, and the reviews largely confirm the bet paid off in the ways that matter most to the audience the film was designed for. That audience gave the film a B+. What they did not do is indicate the kind of A-range enthusiasm that translates into sustained weekly holds.

The path to this opening had friction. Evan Rachel Wood, who portrayed Kylie Owens in the Netflix prequel series, was not asked to return, a development she described publicly as “sad” and attributed to creative choices that moved away from Alice Hoffman’s source material. Joey King, 26, took the role instead. Wood’s candid response generated coverage that exposed a fissure between the sequel’s attempt at a unified franchise narrative and the audience that had invested in the prequel series’ version of the characters. That gap has not closed, and its commercial weight is one variable that makes the weekend estimate harder to read as a clean success.

The question Warner Bros. now carries into next weekend is whether B+ CinemaScore produces real legs on a wide release at this calendar position. October brings meaningful competition for the adult female audience “Practical Magic 2” is primarily targeting. The film runs 115 minutes, a manageable theatrical length that gives exhibitors flexibility, but the studio will need the word-of-mouth to perform better than Friday’s score implies if the sequel is going to approach the cultural standing its predecessor eventually achieved.

Kidman’s last extended theatrical commitment came before her return to television, where Paramount+’s Lioness Season 3 has kept her visible through summer and into fall. Bullock has been considerably less active in the period leading up to this release, making the sequel her most prominent theatrical presence in recent years. The reunion as a commercial strategy was predicated on the idea that the two women together carried more weight than either individually, and the Friday numbers are consistent with that premise, if not an outright confirmation of it.

What no box office estimate resolves is which version of “Practical Magic 2” this opening actually is: the first chapter of a rehabilitated franchise, or a warm send-off to a beloved property that an audience accepted on nostalgia’s terms. The film does not answer that question. Neither does a B+ on Friday night. The answer waits in the second weekend.