Practical Magic 2 is stealing Spider-Man's Friday

Friday belonged to witches before the weekend even finished arguing about webs. Warner Bros.' Practical Magic 2, Susanne Bier directing Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman back as Sally and Gillian Owens, posted $4.7 million in Thursday previews from about 3,200 North American theaters. Deadline's early weekend math then put Friday near $12.5 million and the Friday-to-Sunday band around $30 million from roughly 4,146 theaters. Variety's preview writeup kept the wider $30 million to $40 million opening talk in play. Media Play News and other trackers have been circling a similar low-to-mid $30 million floor with room to over-index. Either floor ends Spider-Man: Brand New Day's six consecutive weekends at No. 1. That is the Reviews desk filing I care about this morning: not a forged letter grade, an opening-weekend theft.

A $4.7 million Thursday is how a cult sequel announces it still owns a lobby.

I already stamped the reunion as an announce in Practical Magic 2 finally puts Bullock and Kidman back in the Owens house. Yesterday the job was cast, rating, and calendar. Today the job is whether the coven can take a Friday that a Marvel tentpole has owned since July 31. The answer, if the trades hold, is yes. A $4.7 million Thursday is not a fluke preview for a 1998 cult object. Comparison pieces this morning stack it above The Lost City's $3.3 million preview and next to Ghostbusters: Afterlife's $4.5 million preview. Star power is doing work the Tomatometer is not. That is allowed. Star power is still a theatrical technology.

Budget furniture belongs in the same paragraph as the theft. Variety put the production cost at $75 million before marketing. The original Practical Magic opened to about $13.1 million in 1998 and finished around $46.7 million domestic, with lifetime worldwide near $94 million including later reissues in some tables. Trades keep noting the sequel could match that entire 1998 domestic run inside three days if the high end of tracking lands. Box Office Pro's pre-release band even flirted higher than Warner's conservative internal talk. I am not inventing a Monday actual. I am saying Warner Bros. walked into September without a 2026 release past $100 million domestic, a drought the coverage keeps comparing to 2001, and suddenly the witches look like the studio's first honest weekend oxygen.

Critic weather is a separate verb and I will keep it separate on purpose. GoldDerby and other roundups have the sequel sitting rotten in the mid-30s on Rotten Tomatoes, near the original's roughly 30 percent card, with Metacritic cousins in the mid-40s. I graded that public sheet already in Practical Magic 2's early Tomatoes card looks a lot like 1998. Reviews desk today is not re-litigating chemistry versus script. Reviews desk today is watching whether audience hunger for Bullock and Kidman in a room together outruns a critic card that rhymes with 1998. Cult classics are allowed to open rotten. Cult classics are not allowed to pretend the card is a secret. The original became a cable and streaming religion after the multiplex shrugged. The sequel is trying to collect the religion as opening weekend cash instead of waiting twenty-eight years for the shrug to become nostalgia.

What the preview number actually buys. It buys confidence that date-night and girls'-night tickets exist outside the Marvel habit. It buys a Friday crown without needing Brand New Day to collapse. Brand New Day is still projected near $10 million to $11 million in week seven while it chases the all-time domestic mark against Force Awakens. I will not pretend the witches killed the spider. They simply out-earned him on a weekend when the spider was already in long-tail mode. Out-earning a sixth-week champion is still a crown. Crowns are weekly. Records are cumulative. Confusing those two is how people misread a healthy Marvel hold as a corpse.

You can end a six-week Marvel streak without ending the Marvel movie.

Cast density remains the product under the gross. Joey King and Maisie Williams as Sally's daughters are the sequel bet, the reason a 130-minute reunion can claim it is about a family rather than a two-hander reunion special. Dianne Wiest and Stockard Channing return as the aunts, which is the nostalgia tax you pay gladly. Lee Pace, Xolo Maridueña, and Solly McLeod join the circle. Spoiler-light means the family is still wrestling a loveless curse and moving toward an origin, not a plot dump. Alice Hoffman's The Book of Magic is the novel source Bier adapts. If you need more than that, you want a recap mill. If you need less than that, the $4.7 million already told you people bought the sister language before the Friday night showtime.

International is the soft secondary line and it still matters for a $75 million film. Variety talked another $18 million to $25 million overseas for a global opening band near $48 million to $65 million. Some earlier studio-side overseas talk sat in the $18 million to $23 million range across dozens of countries. I am not unifying those into a fake worldwide actual on Saturday morning. I am noting that Warner priced a reunion like a real theatrical event, not like a streaming apology with a three-day courtesy window. Theatrical events can still miss. Theatrical events that print $4.7 million on Thursday are not sneaking into the building.

Competing opens make the crown cleaner, not messier. Focus Features' The Uprising is tracking a low-single-digit pulse with mixed notices. Angel Studios' Runner is in the soft mid-single-digit conversation. The Oasis concert documentary is hunting a $5 million to $7 million lane. None of those titles are built to steal Friday from witches who already printed $4.7 million before Friday started. The corridor is crowded with adult theatrical moods. The crown is still binary. Binary is useful. Binary is how you know the chart moved.

Format note for people who still care about screens. The rooftop-and-umbrellas stills and the moonlit house language suggest Bier wants scale even when the plot is domestic curse management. If your town has a bright room, use it. If your town has a sad rectangle, the movie will still be the same curse, only muddier. I am not inventing an IMAX religion for witches. I am saying a reunion this expensive deserves a screen that does not turn candlelight into soup. Ticket practicality is part of Reviews desk when the filing is an opening weekend, not a spoiler map.

My grade of the opening weekend, not of a private print: Practical Magic 2 is a chemistry product that stole the chart from a record-chasing Spider-Man without needing the trades to invent a miracle. $4.7 million Thursday, $30 million-ish weekend talk with upside toward the high $30s or $40 if word of mouth behaves, six weeks of Marvel No. 1 ended. If Monday's actual lands at the low end, the theft still happened. If it over-indexes, Warner gets the first 2026 domestic breath it has been missing. Either way Bullock and Kidman did not need webs. They needed a Friday. They took it.

Last stamp for Reviews desk. Face the still out. Argue the Tomatometer in the comments if you must. The weekend filing is simpler. The Owens sisters took the crown. Brand New Day keeps chasing history in second place. That is not a sermon. That is a chart. Charts are allowed to be romantic when the romantic comedy finally prints money again.