NEED TO KNOW
Bette Midler may be putting a spell on us again soon.
Hocus Pocus 3, another sequel to the 1993 Halloween classic starring Midler, 79, is in the works, according to the screen icon. And fans likely won’t have to repeat the three-decade gap between Hocus Pocus 1 and 2, she told Andy Cohen during a recent appearance on Watch What Happens Live.
The 2022 Hocus Pocus sequel “took 30 years” to come to fruition, exclaimed Midler. “We used to lobby Disney all the time: ‘Hocus Pocus, come on, look at these numbers!’ ”
The long-awaited reunion between the Oscar nominee, Sarah Jessica Parker and Kathy Najimy as the witchy Sanderson sisters ended up being a massive success on Disney+, as Cohen, 57, noted. “Billions of watches,” confirmed Midler. “Billions! I’d never heard that number before.”
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The powers that be at Disney have “sent a script,” she said of a third installment. “And a lot of it was brilliant.”
Midler said she “got very excited, and now we’re trying to figure out what it is and where it’s going to be and how much it’s going to cost and all those logistical things.”
The Anne Fletcher-directed Hocus Pocus 2 costarred Whitney Peak, Belissa Escobedo, Hannah Waddingham and more. Sean Bailey, president of Walt Disney Studios Motion Picture Production, confirmed to The New York Times in June 2023 that a third Hocus Pocus is in development.
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“I’m hoping that we are able to explore every aspect of these stories and take these characters on a bunch of fun adventures,” Hocus Pocus 2 screenwriter Jen D’Angelo told Entertainment Weekly in October 2023. “[The third] is still very much in the early stages; we don’t really know what it is.”
Midler also recalled the failure of another beloved movie of hers — 1996’s First Wives Club costarring Goldie Hawn and the late Diane Keaton — to lead to a sequel.
“We tried and tried and tried. All of us tried,” Midler told Cohen. “We got all sorts of producers involved, but there was something that was going on at Paramount. … They just dug in their heels. They just didn’t feel like it. And we were really insulted.”
A production timeline and release date for Hocus Pocus 3 has yet to be revealed. Among Midler’s other upcoming projects is the comedy film Cut Off, from writer-director-star Jonah Hill.
