Margaritas all around: Practical Magic 2 is on course to top the box office this weekend.
The sequel to the 1998 fantasy movie, which reunites stars Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman, grossed $13 million in the U.S. on Friday. It is on course to make around $30 million over the course of the weekend.
The original film was considered a box office flop, making just $13 million in total on its opening weekend against a budget of $75 million. However, it has built a significant audience in the decades since thanks to home video and streaming.
The success of the long-awaited follow-up will bring an end to the box office dominance of Spider-Man: Brand New Day. The superhero movie has topped the charts for the last six weeks to become the year’s biggest film by a significant margin.
As Variety reports, the latest live-action Spider-Man movie is predicted to reach a grand total of $935.27 million by the end of the weekend. That puts the film second in the ranking of biggest domestic openings of all time, within touching distance of Star Wars: The Force Awakens, which made $936.6 million when it was released in 2015.
Although it has proved a hit at the box office, Practical Magic 2 has failed to cast a spell over critics.
In a two-star review, The Independent’s Clarisse Loughrey wrote: “Practical Magic 2 will, unfortunately, have to be filed away next to the other poorly justified, cash-grab sequels. While the 1998 original did leave the door slightly ajar to the possibility that witch sisters Sally (Sandra Bullock) and Gilly Owens (Nicole Kidman) failed to break the family curse that doomed any man they love to die, all its sequel does is circle around the same track with additional, diluted backstory.”
Loughrey was more impressed by the latest Spider-Man outing, handing Brand New Day four stars and opining that the character “has never felt more authentically Spider-Man than he does here, throwing his hands up in frustration because his reluctant pal Frank Castle (Jon Bernthal), otherwise known as the vigilante Punisher, refuses to consider any solution more peaceful than firing off several rounds of a machine gun.”
She went on to say: “Brand New Day is not only the best of the MCU takes on the character, but it’s also flat out the best Spider-Man film since Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man 2 (2004).”
