SPELLBOUND

THE SANDERSON SISTERS ARE FINALLY BACK IN THE LONG-AWAITED HOCUS POCUS 2

- DARREN SCOTT

FOR A MOVIE THAT DIDN'T EXACTLY SET the box-office alight on its original release in 1993, Hocus Pocus has become a staple of the Halloween season, a cult classic, and such a phenomenon that fans have finally been rewarded for their near 30-year pleas for a sequel.

That's right - they're back, witches. Lock up your children!

Producer Lynn Harris explains that many "extraordinary super fans" internally at Disney had a hand in finally getting the project off the ground. With their insistence that "this is important and you should pay attention", the first draft from yet another super fan, Jen D'Angelo, kicked things off around three years ago.

"We approached the women, and said, 'Hey, guys, it's time to get the band back together,'" Harris says. "They were all amenable and excited and had great notes on the script, which we took into account because each of them has such a deep awareness of their character. Even though it had been 27 years since we first started talking. They really remembered and understood who they were as Winnie, Sarah, and Mary. They clicked right back into character, and it was magic." 

"It's a daunting task to take on something like this with the fandom, because you don't want to blow it," says director Anne Fletcher. "It is very scary, I've never done a sequel." So, she asked herself - apart from the key element of nostalgia - what could she bring to the film?

"The opening of our movie is a prologue to our young witches - and that is the reason I took the movie because I'm very, very much about backstories and truth and grounding," she explains. "Those are the things that I love the most within the grounding you can be silly and stupid, and over the top and crazy. But now the fans get a little peek into the earlier years of our witches. Which to me is a blast. So I took the movie for that par reason. The second reason is the first scare in the movie is so much fun..."