Hocus Pocus 2

It has been 25 years since Disney released this film. Over the years there has been several talks about doing a sequel but we never got one. This is my attempt to explain why.

The original movie was about three witches from Salem, Massachusetts who kidnap a young girl, and cast a spell on her to absorb her youth so they could regain their own. Then they turn her brother into a black cat when he tries saving her. The townspeople capture and hang the witches but only after they cast a curse to be resurrected.

Three hundred years later on Halloween, Max and his family have recently moved to Salem. Max’s crush Allison tells him about the witches cottage which they decide to visit that night. At the cottage, Max, Allison and Dani look around when Max decides to lite the Black Flame Candle bringing back the witches. The witches decide to suck out the souls of all the children in Salem starting with Dani. But with the help of a talking black cat, the kids escape.

Pursed by the witches, Max finds his parents at a Halloween party. The witches sing a song and cast a spell on the town adults so they don’t interfere because they have till sunrise to complete their goal or they will disintegrate. At the high school, the children trap the witches in a kiln and burn them alive, thinking they won.

The witches return and take Dani. The whole chase leads them to a graveyard where the witches can’t set foot but they can fly over on their brooms. The zombie they raised from the dead reveals he hates the witches and joins in helping protect Dani from them. To save Dani, Max drinks the vile and forces the witches to drain his life force instead. The sun rises as the witches are about to finish him off and they turn to dust.

The movie ends with the zombie returning to his grave and the talking cat being able to die and going to peace with his dead sister.

Now here’s the problem I think they were having with trying to make a sequel. How they ended the original with a happy ending that wrapped everything up, that makes it difficult to bring the witches back in a way that fans would accept. Having all three witches turn to dust at the end of the movie makes it impossible to bring them back, unless they start the sequel with a flashback of them casting a completely separate curse that would revive them. But that would be cheap and make no sense.

They spent years talking about a sequel with all three of the witches saying in interviews that they would come back. In 2014 Tina Fey was announced to be a producer and star in the sequel but that never happened. As of September 2017, screenwriter Mick Garris admitted he had been working on a script for the sequel. Garris was the writer of the original movie. But then they said it would instead be a reboot which star Bette Midler said she wouldn’t be a part of. This would work if you wanted to start a new franchise only to make money off of it but you would lose your fans.

In the end I don’t think there will be either a sequel or reboot. A sequel would be what fans want, a reboot would spit on the idea of the original and everyone who loved it.

Thank you for reading and if you think a reboot would work, let me know on Twitter @theLoganMSnyder. Or if you can think of a way to bring the witches that would make sense, again let me know. I would love to hear your ideas.