Fans of the 1993 comedy Hocus Pocus have been longing for years for a sequel. For star Sarah Jessica Parker, she says that revisiting the film’s next chapter alongside her fellow witch sisters Bette Midler, 74, and Kathy Najimy, 63, sounds like a “fun idea.” The 55-year-old appeared on SiriusXM’s Radio Andy show on May 28, in which Andy Cohen‘s best pal, restaurateur Bruce Bozzi, was filling in as host. Since he’s also close pals with SJP, he asked her, “Do you think there would be a sequel to Hocus Pocus? Because it seems to be on peoples’ radar.”
“I think that it’s something that, um, Bette and Kathy and I are all all very hospitable to the idea. And I think for a long time people were talking about it as…if it had been, people were moving forward with it in a real way, but we were unaware of it. But I think now we’ve gotten to the point where we’ve all, we’ve agreed publicly to the right people, ‘Yes, that would be a very very fun idea.’ So we’ll see. We’ll see what the future holds,” SJP shared.
As of the present, the sequel is in the works! Our sister site Variety reported on March 4 that director Adam Shankman will helm the sequel Hocus Pocus 2 for the Disney Plus streaming service. The publication reported that, “The original ‘Hocus Pocus’ cast members are not attached to the sequel, but Disney is hopeful that they will become involved in some capacity.”
When it was announced in Oct. 2019 that the Hocus Pocus sequel was in development at Disney Plus, SJP revealed that she, Kathy and Bette had all agreed to participate. In a Halloween Instagram post showing the three Sanderson sisters, a fan asked about the sequel and Sarah responded, “We have all said yes. Now we wait.” Bette is also excited. At the Oct. 30, 2019 Hulaween event in NYC, she said of the sequel, “Oh my goodness me. Oh, I hope they get to me before I’m a corpse,” Bette told Entertainment Tonight. “We wanna fly again. I hope Disney Plus is a big success and I hope we get to do it, because [Winifred] is of course one of my favorite characters….I can’t wait to read the script. We’re gonna see what happens.”
Sarah and Bette aren’t the first star of the 1993 cult classic to be up for a sequel. Original cast members Vinessa Shaw (Allison), Larry Bagby (Ernie), Omri Katz (Max), Tobias Jelinek (Jay), and Doug Jones (Billy Butcherson), posed for a photo behind a crystal ball that Vinessa posted to her Instagram on Oct. 2, 2019. While it was unclear how the mini-reunion in Los Angeles came to be, Vinessa captioned the post, “Oh, will there be a #2?…’Tis time!” Fingers crossed that everyone makes it into the sequel in one way or another.