Practical Magic 2 dethroned Spider-Man on a soft $30 million weekend

Practical Magic 2 dethroned Spider-Man: Brand New Day on purpose, and the weekend number is soft enough that both things can be true. Warner Bros.' witch sequel from director Susanne Bier opened to about $13 million on Friday across 4,146 North American screens, per Variety and The Hollywood Reporter. Weekend projections clustered around or just under $30 million, good enough for No. 1 after Brand New Day's six-week streak at the top. A B+ CinemaScore landed with audiences. Critics were colder. The franchise math is cult sequel math, not tentpole coronation math.

Thirty million can still end a streak when the streak was Spider-Man.

I want the streak death and the soft open held in the same paragraph. Brand New Day had owned the domestic chart since its July 31 release. Practical Magic 2 ending that run is a real headline. A ~$30 million bow against a $75 million production budget is also a real constraint. Studio pre-release expectations had lived in a $30 million to $35 million band. Hitting the low end while taking No. 1 is not a disaster. It is not a blank check either.

The 1998 original remains the ghost at the banquet. Practical Magic opened to about $13 million against a $75 million budget in its day, stalled around $46 million domestic on the initial run, and finished near $94 million worldwide before home video turned it into a cult object. The sequel's Friday matching that old opening number is a rhyme Variety flagged out loud. Cult sequels often reopen the wound and the comfort at the same time. This one did it on 4,000-plus screens with Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman back as Sally and Gillian Owens.

Cast and premise, spoiler-light. The film picks up decades later as the Owens family curse still haunts love in the bloodline. Dianne Wiest and Stockard Channing return. Joey King, Maisie Williams, Xolo Maridueña, and Lee Pace join the household chaos. Alice Hoffman's novel lineage remains the source spine. Susanne Bier directs. I am not mapping spell mechanics or third-act turns. The product on sale is sister chemistry plus curse weather.

Audience versus critic split is the grading story under the gross. THR reported a 36 percent Rotten Tomatoes critics score for the sequel (a bit better than the original's 29) against a 93 percent audience score, plus that B+ CinemaScore. Angie Han's THR review line, paraphrased in coverage, said the movie works better the less you hunt logic and the more you lean into Bullock and Kidman bouncing off each other. That is a cult-sequel permission slip. It is also a warning for anyone who wanted airtight mythology.

Friday context I already filed when the witches were still stealing the night. The day-of argument lives in Practical Magic 2 is stealing Spider-Man's Friday. Sunday's Features job is the weekend consequence: streak over, soft open confirmed as the price of that crown, and Brand New Day shoved into the record chase lane instead of the No. 1 lane.

Spider-Man's week seven still matters because the record is separate from the throne. Brand New Day made about $2 million on Friday and was targeting roughly $8.5 million for the weekend, which would push the domestic total to about $935.27 million. Star Wars: The Force Awakens sits at $936.6 million as the all-time domestic mark. Inches are inches. I tracked the longer chase in Brand New Day is still chasing the all-time record in week seven. Losing No. 1 to witches does not stop a record. It just changes the headline font.

No. 1 is a weekend. A domestic record is a ledger.

The rest of the frame keeps the witches from looking lonely. Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey was tracking around $8.1 million for the weekend toward a $601 million domestic haul in week nine, with Universal crowing about a studio global record over Jurassic World in THR's accounting. Coyote vs. Acme hovered near $6.3 million toward about $47.8 million after three weekends. Angel Studios' Runner opened to about $2.5 million on Friday with an A- CinemaScore and a ~$6 million weekend vibe. Focus Features' The Uprising, Paul Greengrass and Andrew Garfield's 1381 ploughman drama, managed about $1.3 to $1.38 million on Friday toward a soft ~$3.1 million weekend and a ninth-place kind of pain. I already called that pulse soft in The Uprising opens with a soft pulse and a loud branding problem.

Owens aisle prehistory for people who only read Sunday. The sisters' return was already an appointment object before Friday's receipts, which is why Practical Magic 2 finally puts Bullock and Kidman back in the Owens house still matters as packaging context. Early Tomatoes weather had looked a lot like 1998 in prior filings. Weekend audiences answered with a B+ and a 93 percent audience card while critics stayed chilly. That split is the cult path continuing, not a surprise twist.

Budget honesty without fake margins. Seventy-five million is a real production number for a witch dramedy that needs stars, sets, and spell glue. A ~$30 million domestic opening does not equal profit calculus by itself. Multiplex hold, international boards, and the long home-video afterlife that saved the first film are the rest of the ledger. Cult sequels can win on the fourth window. They can also stall if the audience stamp does not turn into a rewatch religion.

What "dethroned on purpose" means from this desk. Warner Bros. put Bullock and Kidman on more than 4,000 screens opposite a six-week Marvel exhaustion curve and aimed at the exact weekend where Brand New Day could finally be nudged. That is scheduling craft. It worked for the throne. It did not invent a $80 million fantasy opening. Craft and ceiling are different compliments.

Who this weekend is for. People who wanted the Owens house more than another Spider-Man lap. People who grade CinemaScore as the audience telegram. People who understand that a soft No. 1 can still be a cultural win when the original was a flop that became a lifestyle. Who should temper the champagne: anyone reading $30 million as proof Hollywood found a new tentpole genre in witch sisterhood. It found a weekend. The cult still has to do the years.

Hold math will decide whether this soft crown was a one-weekend costume party. Witch audiences can be loyal in a way comic audiences are loud. If Saturday and Sunday add without a cliff, Warner gets a platform for week two counterprogramming talk. If the weekend lands and then evaporates Monday, the B+ becomes a nice telegram in a short war. I am not inventing Monday numbers on Sunday morning. I am naming the next receipt.

International boards were teased in pre-release studio ranges as meaningful support, not as the whole oxygen tank. Domestic soft opens sometimes grow abroad when the stars travel. Bullock and Kidman are traveling brands. Whether Practical Magic's specifically American cult texture translates is the open question. Cult is local until the meme becomes global. 1998 needed video stores. 2026 needs group chats and anniversary TikToks. Different pipes. Same hunger for sister chaos.

Scheduling craft deserves a clean compliment without turning into a studio hagiography. Putting the Owens aisle on the weekend Brand New Day finally looked mortal was not luck. Marvel fatigue is not a law of physics, but six weeks at No. 1 is a human attention curve. Witches walked into the curve with 4,146 screens and a nostalgia engine. That is how you dethrone on purpose. Softness is what you accept when your genre is not a cape.

For the Features ledger, keep three columns open through next week: weekend final versus the $30 million band, CinemaScore versus critic chill as a predictor of legs, and Brand New Day's remaining gap to Force Awakens as a parallel soap opera. The witches stole the throne. The web-head still owns the record soap. Sunday is big enough for both serials.

My Features desk read: Practical Magic 2 took No. 1 with a soft ~$30 million weekend, a B+ CinemaScore, and enough sister chemistry demand to end Brand New Day's six-week streak without pretending the budget already paid for itself. The witches won the weekend on purpose. Spider-Man still owns the record chase. Both ledgers can stay open at once.