Hollywood has solved nostalgia the only way it knows how: by remaking something people already liked, then having the new cast explain that audiences are tired and sad. Maisie Williams and Joey King are here to tell us we’re all desperately craving simpler times—which is Hollywood-speak for “we spent $80 million on this and need you to feel something.”
The original 1998 Practical Magic was a mid-tier fantasy romcom that nobody asked for a sequel to. But in 2026, when actual reality has become a 24-hour news feed of market corrections, geopolitical restructuring, and AI companies promising to solve problems by creating new ones, suddenly a film about two sisters dealing with a family curse feels like a spiritual documentary. The actresses dutifully hit the press circuit explaining that audiences want “escapism” and “magic”—as if we’re not already living in an era where billionaires are literally launching cryptocurrency coins and tech CEOs are positioning themselves as the intellectual heirs to ancient philosophers.
What’s genuinely absurd is that they’re not wrong. We do want simpler times. We want a world where witchcraft is the strangest thing happening, where family dysfunction can be solved by a spell rather than therapy, and where the most complicated technology you encounter is a potion recipe. The reboot isn’t cynical manipulation—it’s honest desperation dressed up as entertainment. Hollywood isn’t selling us the past. It’s selling us permission to pretend the present is a temporary glitch.