Many fans would have liked to see Hocus Pocus 2 have more original franchise characters, but one star says it was right to avoid it.
Hocus Pocus 2 sparked a huge Halloween audience on Disney+ in 2022, with the return of the Sanderson sisters who brought back nostalgic memories of the ’90s classic. Bringing back Najimy as Winifred, Sarah, and Mary Sanderson, respectively, as well as Doug Jones as the zombie Billy Butcherson, many fans were disappointed that the original film’s younger cast didn’t reprise their roles in the highly anticipated sequel. However, one original star believes casting a whole new group of youngsters to take on the witch trio was the right move.
Sean Murray played Thackery Binx in 1993 Hocus Pocus, the teenager who faced the Sandersons in 1693 and was eventually cursed to live forever as a black cat. While Thackery Binx’s character died at the end of Hocus Pocus and Murray’s return was never really on the cards, he’s fully behind the sequel, not treading the old ground and focusing on telling a whole new story centered around the Sanderson sisters. He told Weekly entertainment:
“To me, Hocus Pocus is really about those three women, those three witches. It actually makes perfect sense to me that you would have a newer group with the witches and not necessarily from the original group. You know, we’re all old and wrinkled now. Who wants to see us?”
Would more original cast members have made Hocus Pocus 2 better?
Recent years have spawned a number of “legacy” sequels, films that bring back returning cast members from an old franchise and incorporate them into a new story that stays true to the original film’s timeline. This included the likes of Ghostbusters: Afterlife And Top gun: Maverick, both of which delivered successful sequels to their long-dormant franchises. When it comes to hocus pocus 2, there were plans to have some more original cast members, including Thora Birch, in the sequel, but as she explained, it just didn’t work.
“There were three options we had to bring Dani back, all of which I was excited about. But it turned out that by the time they finally started filming, I was already on to something else, so… I’m open-minded . You want to talk about spinoffs, you want to talk all about it, let’s go. That’s the question (where Dani is today). That’s kind of what we were going to explore.”
Despite many fans longing for a full Hocus Pocus reunion, with Birch and her fellow stars Omri Katz and Vinessa Shaw returning to rejoin the Sandersons, their absences didn’t really detract from the film’s performance. When it was released in late 2022, Hocus Pocus 2 conjured up the largest even audience in a week for a movie streaming release, despite reviews not being so magical. Whether or not the addition of more original cast members would have helped the movie garner better reviews, it certainly couldn’t have made it more successful than it was without them.