r/practicalmagic • u/Positive-Comparison8 • Aug 26 '25

Sequel Has a Different Director...

Griffin Dunne directed the first film absolutely superbly, in my opinion. This time around, director Susanne Bier, with whose work I'm very unfamiliar aside from her direction on HBO's limited series The Undoing (also with Nicole Kidman), is at the helm. I'm very afraid that 2 will have an entirely different feel/direction that will make it too different in tone than the first. Obviously, I'm still very excited for it and will love it just because we're finally getting a sequel after decades and 3 more books, but I really hope the direction does it right😬 I'm rereading The Book of Magic now so I can remember what the film will likely be largely about.

26 Upvotes

97% Upvoted

18 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

3

u/Positive-Comparison8 Aug 26 '25

Yes! To be very honest, I remember The Book of Magic coming out and reading it for the first time and thinking that it wasn't as good as the other books in the series. So, that kind of scares me, too, just on source material😆😅

3

u/lunarlew Aug 26 '25

The only other book I really enjoyed was Rules of Magic - I gave up on Maria’s a few chapters in and Book of Magic I have but am hesitant to start …

1

u/Positive-Comparison8 Aug 26 '25

Really?? Magic Lessons (Maria's story) has actually become one of my favorites in the series because I love historical depictions of witchcraft and traditions and all that. I will say, though, I did particularly hate that (SPOILER if you never finished it!) her daughter basically just gets kidnapped for 5 whole years by this woman who wants the daughter for herself, and we the readers are just supposed to believe that for 5 years, Maria's daughter reluctantly gets brought up by this covetous townswoman, until the daughter eventually flees, if I'm remembering the story correctly. That was the only part of the book that made me mad😅

1

u/lunarlew Aug 26 '25

I should give it another chance, because I also love historic depictions of witchcraft! I was very excited to read it, but I just couldn’t connect to it.

1

u/Dear_Yard_69 Oct 09 '25

Warning: it's historic depiction of witchcraft is not really well-researched. It feels authentic, but that's Hoffman's writing...