Practical Magic 2 returns to a world steeped in moonlit mischief and powerful ancestral magic, as the Owens sisters must confront the dark curse that threatens to unravel their family once and for all in a must-see cinematic event of fun, magic and mayhem.
Susanne Bier directs from a screenplay by Akiva Goldsman and Georgia Pritchett and Kelly Marcel, based on the novel entitled The Book of Magic by Alice Hoffman.
Q & A with director Susanne Brier
Q: What were the events that led to your becoming the director of PRACTICAL MAGIC 2?
SUSANNE BIER (Director): I got a call around Christmas of ‘24. I spoke both to Sandy and to Nicole. “We have this project; it can be really fun. Do you want to read?” And I was like, “Sure, I’d love to read. I mean, I’d love to work with both of you again.” And doing a big, cinematic release that is female-driven and is about something that actually is very close to my heart just sounded incredibly tempting. What intrigued me in the first place was actually making a movie with substantial female themes while making something that is fun and sexy and evocative and sad and moving. I don’t even need to question that. That’s an obvious yes for me.
Q: A generation has grown up with this movie, and there have been changes in the filmmaking landscape since the original. How did you approach it?
SUSANNE BIER: For me, the main thing is how do you take a story which became incredibly relevant 28 years ago? Because the first movie had an interesting trajectory. When it came out, it was a mystifying movie. And then it gained a huge following and fan base that was really adamant and really devoted. And so, I think what was tricky was how do you merge? There have been a number of movies dealing with magical entities, and you have a whole generation of young women and men who have grown up seeing movies like Harry Potter. How do you tell a story today which has magic, but still stays true to being about human beings? I mean, Practical Magic is much more about human relation than it actually is about magic. But magic is a fundamental core of it, and the magic serves the human purpose. And that’s not true for all movies, but it’s true for Practical Magic.
Q: How did you set out to strike a balance between the human and the magical?
SUSANNE BIER: Magic is wonderful and fun and seductive. And I love it. But this movie is about relationships. This movie is about sisterhood, about motherhood. It’s about families. It’s about love, the very wide aspect of the word. And so, the magic needed to serve that purpose. The magic is not an entity in itself. The magic is there to test, question, enforce all those relations. In that respect, it wasn’t difficult figuring out the balance, because the quest was very clear. That magic needs to be a tool, or it needs to be a potential antagonist. It’s there to inform all those relationships.
Q: What do you hope for the audiences experiencing this film?
SUSANNE BIER: I mean, that is the essence of cinema, and that is why I believe in cinema and why I believe in this movie: watching a movie with other people is an entirely different experience from watching it on your own. You sit in a room, you share laughter, you share tears, you share a whole lot of things, and you have an experience with other human beings. And watching a movie at home on your computer or even on your phone is the opposite. You can be engaged, but it doesn’t have the joy of being with other people doing it. And that’s what I hope for with this movie. I want this movie to have lots of people sharing a fun, joyful, at times sad, but most importantly, really engaging experience.
SUSANNE BIER (Director) Bier won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film for In A Better World (2010), which also received the Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Language Film and earned Bier the European Film Award for Best Director. Her 2006 feature After The Wedding was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film and was later remade in English in 2019. On the television side, Bier has directed the complete run of every series she has helmed, including Netflix’s The Perfect Couple (2024), Showtime’s The First Lady (2022), and HBO’s The Undoing (2020). In 2016, Bier won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Directing for the AMC limited series The Night Manager, based on the novel by John le Carré. She also received the Directors Guild of America Award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Movies for Television and Limited Series. Her feature directing credits also include Netflix’s Bird Box (2018), Things We Lost In The Fire (2007), Brothers (2004), Open Hearts (2002), The One And Only (1999), Love Is All You Need (2012), and A Second Chance (2014).
Raised in Brooklyn Heights, New York, AKIVA GOLDSMAN (Screenplay by) received his bachelor’s degree from Wesleyan University and attended the graduate fiction writing program at NYU. His feature writing credits include The Client, Batman Forever, A Time to Kill, Practical Magic, Cinderella Man, I Am Legend, The Da Vinci Code, Angels & Demons, Insurgent, and I, Robot. He also wrote A Beautiful Mind, for which he won an Oscar, Golden Globe, and WGA Award. Upcoming features include Howl, Thumb, a live-action Monster High film, Brilliance, Major Matt Mason, and the sequels to Practical Magic, which launches September 11, 2026, I Am Legend, and Constantine. He has worked in television as a producer, writer, and director for Fringe, for which he garnered a Saturn Award and a Hugo Award nomination; as well as Underground, which was nominated for multiple NAACP Image Awards. He also co-created, wrote and produced the live-action series Titans, and Star Trek: Picard. Released last year, limited series, The Crowded Room was a passion project of Goldsman’s that he created, wrote, and produced. Currently, Goldsman is the primary architect and creator of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, Season 4 of which will launch July 23, 2026, with Season 5 being greenlit to follow. He is also working on Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, Land of the Giants, and The Time Tunnel which are currently in development with Legendary Television. Under his Weed Road Pictures banner, Goldsman has produced Deep Blue Sea, Constantine, Mr. & Mrs. Smith, Hancock, Starsky and Hutch, Without Remorse, The Map of Tiny Perfect Things, Back to the Outback, Meet Cute, and the upcoming Billion Dollar Spy.
GEORGIA PRITCHETT (Screenplay by) is a multi-award-winning comedy and drama writer, who has five Emmys, six Writers Guild awards, two Golden Globes, a BAFTA and a Producer’s Guild award. She is under an overall with UCP and was most recently a writer and co-executive producer on HBO’s critically acclaimed show, Succession. Georgia was the co-executive producer and writer on the HBO multi-Emmy winning show Veep, which ran for seven seasons. Georgia recently show-ran The Shrink Next Door for Apple TV. She wrote three episodes of HBO’s Avenue Five, Armando Iannucci’s space comedy starring Hugh Laurie. Georgia has written extensively for Miranda Hart and Tracy Ullman and the shows Have I Got News for You, Smack the Pony, Not Going Out and The Thick of It. She created, wrote and show-ran 2DTV for ITV as well as Quick Cuts, Feel The Force and three series of Life of Riley for the BBC. Georgia’s memoir My Mess is a Bit of a Life was released in the summer of 2021 to rave reviews.
KELLY MARCEL (Screenplay by) is an award-nominated British writer, producer and director whose work spans some of the most successful film and television projects of the past decade. Her breakthrough came with the creation of the television series Terra Nova, which sparked a competitive bidding war before being produced by Steven Spielberg as one of the most ambitious and expensive network television series of its time for Twentieth Century Fox. She went on to write Saving Mr. Banks, Saving Mr. Banks received a BAFTA nomination for Outstanding British Film, while Marcel was nominated for the BAFTA for Outstanding Debut. Marcel next adapted E. L. James’ literary phenomenon Fifty Shades of Grey, Cruella, before co-writing and executive producing Sony Pictures’ Venom, and then wrote and produced Venom: Let There Be Carnage, another worldwide box-office hit. She then created, wrote, executive produced and served as showrunner on The Changeling. Marcel made her feature directorial debut with Venom: The Last Dance, which she also wrote and produced. She is a writer and executive producer on Practical Magic 2.
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