When Practical Magic, a wacky adaptation of a novel by Alice Hoffman, starring Nicole Kidman and Sandra Bullock as sisters from a long line of romantically cursed witches, was released, in 1998, it lost money, grossing $68 million against an estimated budget of $75 million. It also baffled critics with its angular marriage of romantic comedy, witchcraft, autumnal colour schemes and domestic abuse.
But over the years it has gained a cult following. Susanne Bier, the Oscar-winning director of In a Better World, was not among the whimsigoth – yes, that’s a thing – faithful. Until now.
“I hadn’t seen it until I was approached about a sequel,” she says. “Only then I watched it and loved it. I loved Sandy and Nicole, Diane Wiest and Stockard Channing. I loved the fun and the wildness. So I thought, okay, we’re going to take something that has such a seductive call and embrace, but still make something new.”
Practical Magic 2 first look: Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman return for cult classic sequel
I meet Bier in London a few hours before Practical Magic 2’s premiere. Nearly three decades after the original film flopped, franchise fans are queuing outside the hotel where the director is staying. It’s a sign of the times.
In theory the instant, collective-discovery potential of streaming might have made Hollywood less dependent on the past. In practice, studios have learned that familiarity is one of the few reliable currencies in an overcrowded content economy.
The latest iteration is the announcement of Days of Thunder 2, which will bring Tom Cruise back as Cole Trickle decades after the original; next year audiences are expected to get Heat 2 and Shrek 5, bringing two more long-dormant favourites back to multiplexes.
What looks at first like nostalgia is also a new industrial logic: streaming has turned decades of movies into a reservoir of recognisable intellectual property. So Practical Magic 2 features three Oscar winners on screen – Kidman, Bullock and Wiest – and another behind the camera.
“I had worked with both Sandy and Nicole before,” says Bier, who directed Bullock in the Netflix smash Bird Box and Kidman in two TV series, The Perfect Couple and The Undoing.
“But it’s very different with the two of them together, because the effect isn’t doubled. It’s multiplied by 10 or something. The energy between the two of them is incredible, because they really stimulate, challenge and enjoy each other. That makes it very energetic and vivid.”
Practical Magic 2, which is based on Hoffman’s 2021 novel The Book of Magic, drafts in Joey King and Maisie Williams as Kylie and Antonia, the younger generation of Owens witches. When a family curse strikes again, Kylie journeys to their ancestral home in England, hoping to break the hex and save her comatose boyfriend. She is duly pursued by her mother and aunt, who squabble all the way across the ocean.
“I don’t have a sister, so the sisterhood thing was something that I was kind of invited into, and which I really thoroughly enjoyed,” Bier says. “I have two brothers, and throughout my childhood most of my friends were boys. Coming into sisterhood as a grown-up, in a very, very deep way, made me appreciate it.
“I have friends who are like sisters, where we kind of know everything about each other. That feels like a very deep comfort and recognition for me. I wasn’t brought up with it, but it talks to the idea that family can be something broader than just what you’re born into. I think that’s very meaningful and really important.”
Bier was born in Copenhagen in 1960 into a Jewish family whose history had been shaped by displacement and war. Her father’s family left Germany for Denmark in 1933 after the Nazis came to power. Following the German invasion of that country during the second World War, the family fled to Sweden. After the war they returned to Denmark, where Bier grew up. It is no accident, she says, that so many of her films explore the precariousness of family life.
“There’s no doubt about the links between my films and family history,” says Bier. “I’ve always had a huge curiosity about families but also a natural understanding of family dynamics. So I think anything to do with family immediately attracts me and immediately feels like material that I can recognise and utilise.”
Bier initially pursued art and design rather than film-making, studying in Israel before moving to London to attend the Architectural Association. She abandoned architecture after several years but says the training still comes in handy, especially for long-form prestige television – notably The Night Manager and The First Lady – that she has become synonymous with in recent years.
“As an architect you understand the blueprint,” she says. “You take a step back and look at the biggest picture. I think what I’ve done as a director very much utilises that skill. When I’ve done TV shows that have been six or even 10 episodes, you need to understand and think about the bigger scheme of things. You need to know where every character and scene fits. And as a director, one of the most important things is to navigate big decisions and small decisions, and prioritise. I learned all those things as an architect.”
In a Better World, Bier’s international breakthrough, in 2010, set a family crisis in Denmark alongside the work of a doctor at a Sudanese refugee camp, skilfully connecting morality, violence, parenthood and geopolitics. It won the Academy Award and Golden Globe for best foreign-language film.
“I suppose if you get an Oscar, you do get invited to meetings that you didn’t get invited to before getting an Oscar,” Bier says. “Having said that, there is this weird thing in Hollywood that you’re never better than your most recent work.
“You can’t just relax and lie back and think that everything is fine. You have to keep asking yourself all the important questions. I think in life you have to always ask, ‘Am I doing the right thing? Is this what it’s meant to be?’ Being a person who can keep asking those questions is also part of one’s creativity.”
I never thought of movies as a limited intellectual medium
Bier’s subsequent transition into English-language film-making hasn’t always been easy. Things We Lost in the Fire, starring Halle Berry and Benicio del Toro, arrived in 2007, followed several years later by Serena, a period drama with Jennifer Lawrence and Bradley Cooper. Neither film matched the critical or commercial success of her Danish work. But working across languages is its own reward.
“I direct a lot with my face or with my hands and things like that,” she says. “So there’s a part of me that thinks maybe I could direct in Chinese.”
Bier found her anglophone groove with prestige television. Since her 2016 serialisation of The Night Manager, based on John le Carré’s book, Bier has become a regular at the Primetime Emmy Awards. Television and streaming have brought a whole new fan base.
“I never thought of movies as a limited intellectual medium,” she says. “There was always a part of me that thought if I’m doing something, I want it to be something that I honestly believe audiences are going to want to see.”
If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, Bier has been flattered aplenty. Like It Never Was Before, her third feature, was reworked as a play; After the Wedding was remade in English by Julianne Moore and her writer-director husband, Bart Freundlich; Brothers was remade in English by Jim Sheridan and inspired an opera by the Icelandic composer Daníel Bjarnason. She is a properly influential figure.
“When you have kids they grow up,” she says. “The responsibility goes away a little bit. I do find it very rewarding that people want to take my things and make other things with them. And I don’t feel that I have to be controlling it or feeling responsible for it. It’s a great feeling. Let me just enjoy it.”
Practical Magic 2 is in cinemas from Friday, September 11th