Practical Magic

Plot

In Massachusetts, the Owens family have been persecuted for over three centuries because their ancestor Maria Owens survived an attempted execution for witchcraft. Heartbroken when the father of her unborn child left her banished on an offshore island, Maria cast a spell to prevent herself from ever falling in love again. The spell developed into a curse upon Maria's descendants, dooming any man an Owens woman loves.

In the present, Sally and Gillian Owens are taken in by their aunts Frances and Jet after their parents succumb to the Owens curse. As children, Sally and Gillian are frequently ridiculed by the town's schoolchildren. Upon witnessing their aunts cast a love spell for a woman obsessed with her beloved, Sally casts a spell on herself to ensure she will only fall in love with a man who possesses certain seemingly impossible traits, with the intention of never falling in love. Witnessing the same incident, Gillian cannot wait to fall in love. As teenagers, Gillian elopes with her boyfriend and leaves for Los Angeles. Before she departs, she and Sally use a blood spell to swear to always be faithful to one another, grow old together, and die at the same time.

Gillian spends the next decade moving from relationship to relationship across the country, while back in Massachusetts, Sally meets and marries a local named Michael. They have two daughters, Kylie and Antonia. After a truck fatally hits Michael, Sally and her girls move in with the aunts. Learning that they secretly cast a love spell on her so that she could marry and be happy, Sally vows that the aunts will never teach her daughters magic.

Gillian tells Sally her involvement with a man named Jimmy Angelov, a powerful presence who she often sedates with small amounts of belladonna. Gillian eventually phones Sally and asks her to come get her. Soon after Sally arrives to rescue her now abused sister, Angelov takes them hostage in his car. Sally puts belladonna into Jimmy's tequila to knock him unconscious, but inadvertently kills him. The sisters take Jimmy's body back to the aunts' house, where they resurrect him with a forbidden spell, but he begins to choke Gillian again and Sally kills him for the second time. The sisters bury Angelov's remains in the garden. Sally, Gillian, and the aunts have a midnight drinking session in which Jimmy's tequila seems to be influencing them to turn against each other; the aunts leave home the following morning, leaving a message to the sisters to "clean up their own mess".

Production

Practical Magic was filmed in part on an artificial set in California. Because the film's producers decided the house was a big part of the depiction of the Owens culture, a house to accurately represent that vision was built on San Juan Island in the state of Washington. While much of the set from California was brought to that location and placed inside the house, it took nearly a year to perfect the image of the house and the interior. The house, actually only a shell with nothing inside, was built only for this filming and was torn down after filming was completed. The small town scenes were filmed in downtown Coupeville, Washington, a Victorian-era seaside port town located on the south side of Penn Cove on Whidbey Island. Nicole Kidman's work on Practical Magic and her ex-husband Tom Cruise's work on Mission: Impossible 2 were respectively delayed due to production of Eyes Wide Shut taking much longer than expected.

The film's production design was led by Robin Standefer and Stephen Alesch of the design studio Roman and Williams. They created the film’s richly detailed sets, including the Owens family home, and designed many of the props by hand. According to Standefer and Alesch, they also designed the film’s distinctive spellbook prop, which features original hand-drawn illustrations by Alesch. Standefer has stated, “Stephen and I devoted ourselves to that. We made every little thing in the film, down to the tincture jars and pressed flowers,” adding that Alesch “did incredible etchings of plants that you can see all around the dining room.”

Director Griffin Dunne said he originally had a darker vision for the film. The scene with Sally and Gilly inserting needles into Jimmy was supposed to be much more disturbing and the domestic violence plot line was more intense, but the studio cut the darker material. He expressed interest in a director's cut.

According to Sandra Bullock in the DVD commentary, while filming the scene where the Owens women are drunk and slinging insults, the actresses actually got drunk on very bad tequila brought by Kidman.

The cast further stated in the film's commentary that they felt supernatural elements of the house started to affect them. Both the cast and crew claimed they heard supernatural noises while filming the coven scene at the end of the film. For the final scene with all of the townspeople at the Owens home, the entire population of the town where filming took place was invited to show up in costume and appear as townsfolk.

Music

Composer Michael Nyman's score for the film was abruptly replaced with music by Alan Silvestri for the theatrical release. This last-minute change resulted in the release of two soundtracks, although as primarily a compilation album only the two tracks of newly created material were changed. A 50-track demo (the last two tracks being "Convening the Coven" and "Maria Owens") of Nyman's score has been circulating among fans as a bootleg. The complete Nyman score runs 62:30 and contains music that would later appear, in altered form, in Ravenous and The Actors, as well as a bit of his stepwise chord progression theme from Out of the Ruins/String Quartet No. 3/Carrington/The End of the Affair/The Claim. "Convening the Coven", though not "Maria Owens", was subsequently reissued on The Very Best of Michael Nyman: Film Music 1980–2001, and music that uses material related to this piece has not been used elsewhere. "Convening the Coven" became "City of Turin" on The Glare.

Singer Stevie Nicks headlined the soundtrack's published advertisements. The lead single was "If You Ever Did Believe", which was the first time Nicks released her own recording of the song that she had written in the 1970s and previously allowed Louise Goffin to record for her 1981 album. Nicks also recorded a new version of her song "Crystal". Both songs feature Sheryl Crow on back-up vocals.

Track listing

"If You Ever Did Believe" – Stevie Nicks

"This Kiss" – Faith Hill

"Got to Give It Up (Pt.1)" – Marvin Gaye

"Is This Real?" – Lisa Hall

"Black Eyed Dog" – Nick Drake

"A Case of You" – Joni Mitchell

"Nowhere and Everywhere" – Michelle Lewis

"Always on My Mind" – Elvis Presley

"Everywhere" – Bran Van 3000

Reception

Box office

Practical Magic opened at #1 with $13.1 million in ticket sales, beating out Antz, Bride of Chucky and Beloved. In Australia, the film debuted at the top of the box office ahead of Ronin and The Waterboy, making $1.6 million in its first weekend. The film went on to gross $94.4 million worldwide, on a production budget of $60–75 million.

Audience viewership

Practical Magic entered the Max top 10 films chart, securing the #5 spot just one day after its October 1, 2024, premiere on the streaming platform.

Critical response

Practical Magic received negative reviews from critics upon release, who panned its inconsistent tone and script. On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 31% based on 111 reviews, with an average rating of 5.1/10. The website's critics consensus reads, "Practical Magic's jarring tonal shifts sink what little potential its offbeat story may have – though Nicole Kidman and Sandra Bullock's chemistry makes a strong argument for future collaborations." On Metacritic, which assigns a weighted average score out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the film received an average score of 46 based on 22 critics, indicating "mixed or average" reviews. Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of B− on an A+ to F scale.

Owen Gleiberman of Entertainment Weekly gave Practical Magic a negative review, calling it "a witch comedy so slapdash, plodding, and muddled it seems to have had a hex put on it." Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times spoke of the film's unsure tone, "veering uncertainly from horror to laughs to romance", and opined that the film "is too scary for children and too childish for adults".

Garth Stahl of the Hartford Courant was more positive, noting that women in dark comedy and depictions of sisterhood are rare in film. He wrote Practical Magic "has its flaws. Some scenes are weak, occasionally lines are a little muddled, and there is some plot underdevelopment. Yet it is daring and fun — a frolic for two charming actresses and a dapper film premise". He concluded "The main source of attraction is undeniably the enchanting and witty witchcraft. It is simultaneously what makes the Owen sisters outcasts and what makes them special. With a few very sharp scenes, including a jazzy dance sequence, 'Practical Magic' is worth [it]. It is a step toward allowing women to assert themselves in the genre of dark comedy. Now isn't that practical."

Release

Practical Magic was released theatrically in the United States on October 16, 1998, by Warner Bros. Pictures.

The film was released on VHS and DVD in the United States on February 16, 1999, by Warner Home Video. A 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray was released on August 25, 2026, from Warner Bros. Home Entertainment.

Legacy

The film has acquired a cult following over the years. Writing about Practical Magic's legacy in 2018, David Sims of The Atlantic discussed how the film centers relationships between women through the Owens bloodline as well as in the final scene involving the town's women uniting to free Gillian from Jimmy's control. He described the film as a mainstream studio feature "that wove dark themes about gender and power into an ostensible crowd-pleasing comedy", qualities that made it unusual for its time and have contributed to its staying power.

In other media

In 2004, Warner Bros. and CBS produced Sudbury, a television pilot written by Becky Hartman Edwards and directed by Bryan Spicer starring Kim Delaney in the role played by Bullock in the film and Jeri Ryan in the role played by Kidman. The series, named for the Sudbury, Massachusetts location of the novel and film, was not picked up.

In 2010, Warner Bros. and ABC Family attempted to develop a prequel television series.

In 2019, it was announced that HBO Max was developing a prequel television series, based on Alice Hoffman's 2017 prequel novel, The Rules of Magic, with Jessica Jones creator Melissa Rosenberg writing and executive producing. However, the project never came to fruition.

Sequel

In June 2024, it was announced that a sequel was in development. Bullock and Kidman will return to produce the film with Di Novi and were in talks to star in it. Later that same month, Nicole Kidman confirmed that she and Sandra Bullock would reprise their roles in the sequel. Akiva Goldsman, who co-wrote the screenplay for the original film, would return to write the script. Griffin Dunne hinted that a woman will direct the sequel, while he will serve as an executive producer.

While specific plot details remain under wraps, the sequel will be based on Alice Hoffman's 2021 novel The Book of Magic, the fourth installment in her Practical Magic series. Although the timeline is still uncertain, in August 2024, producer Denise Di Novi is optimistic about beginning production next year. In January 2025, Susanne Bier was reportedly in talks to direct the sequel. In February 2025, Kidman mentioned that the sequel was "moving ahead rapidly". Three months later, it was announced that Bier would direct the film, which is scheduled for release on September 11, 2026.

In July 2025, it was announced Joey King and Maisie Williams had been cast as Sally's daughters. That same month, it was revealed Stockard Channing and Dianne Wiest would reprise their roles as Frances and Jet, respectively; Lee Pace, Xolo Maridueña, and Solly McLeod were also cast in unknown roles.

Musical

On February 9, 2026, it was confirmed that a Broadway musical based on the film was in development, to be written by series author Alice Hoffman and Peter Duchan, with an original score by Norah Jones and Gregg Wattenberg, and Maria Friedman directing.