Entertainment

Nicole Kidman's 104-Minute Fantasy Classic Officially Takes Over HBO Max

Nairavoice · Nov 5, 2026 · 5 min read

The fantasy genre so often thrives during the Fall box office. Sepia skies and falling leaves make for the perfect backdrop to magical movies, such as Laika‘s latest stop-motion masterpiece, Wildwood. Having been 15 years in the making, with the company first acquiring the rights to the source material when helping produce its trailer in 2011, Wildwood received gushing praise from critics upon release, with Collider’s Aidan Kelley writing that “Wildwood soars above” every other Laika movie.

But for all the high praise that this so-called “masterpiece” is receiving, it is struggling to prove popular at the box office. Against a production budget of $100 million, the movie has only returned $30 million so far, a frustrating reality in an age when watching hand-crafted artistry is more important than ever. But Wildwood isn’t the only fantasy movie to struggle at the box office this season. Against a $75 million budget, the bewitching legacy sequel Practical Magic 2 only returned $105 million worldwide in a theatrical run that is all but complete.

This underwhelming return was, in part, due to a negative response from both fans and critics to the movie, despite both Nicole Kidman and Sandra Bullock reprising their roles as Gillian and Sally Owens, sisters descended from a long line of witches. “Practical Magic 2 is painfully forgettable, with no particularly clever or impactful quotes, impressive setpieces, or emotionally resonant moments that will stay with you after the credits roll,” wrote Collider’s Taylor Gates in one of many disappointed reviews. But Practical Magic 2‘s loss is seemingly the original’s gain. As the sequel whimpers out of theaters, 1998’s Practical Magic is one of the ten most-watched movies on HBO Max in the U.S., proving that the franchise (or at the very least the original movie) still has some staying power all these years later.

Four love stories, four completely different ideas of what it means to
be somebody’s person. This is the one that matches how you actually fall, and what it would ask of
you.

You do not fall for strangers. You fall for the person you have
already been talking to for years, which is the slowest and by some distance the most
durable way anybody has found to do this.

When Harry Met Sally made the case that the best romance is an argument you enjoy,
conducted over a decade, by two people refusing to admit what is happening.
You want to be known rather than swept away. Somebody who remembers your worst story is
doing better work than anybody arriving with flowers.
The film is unusually honest about timing. These two are wrong for each other repeatedly
until suddenly they are not, and neither of them engineered it.
You would still be talking about everything at eighty. That is the entire promise.

You want a partner, not an audience. Somebody who wants their own
life as badly as you want yours, and who would never ask you to be smaller to make the
relationship easier.

This is the rare romance where both people have a real career and the film takes both of
them equally seriously.
You would rather be pushed than protected. The right person for you is also a bit of a
rival, and that never entirely goes away.
It understands the actual problem in ambitious relationships. Not whether you love each
other, but whose turn it is this year.
You would still be competing at forty. That is how you would know it was working.

The intensity was never the problem. The secrecy is. You are
drawn to a love that lives entirely in private, and to the particular ache of wanting
somebody you are not supposed to want.

Heated Rivalry runs on the oldest engine in romance: two people on opposite sides,
meeting in secret, getting far more attached than either of them planned.
You keep your private life genuinely private, and something in you finds hidden things
more real than public ones.
The tension is not only between the two of them. It is between what they have and what
it would cost either one to say it out loud.
Years of this, and the whole story is really about whether either of them will finally
stop hiding.

You do not do this cautiously. When it happens for you it is
immediate and total and it rearranges everything, and you would not accept a smaller version
of it.

Titanic gave us the biggest romance in film history and then made it last about five
days, which is precisely the point of it.
You measure love by intensity rather than duration. A few days of the real thing beats
decades of something merely comfortable.
The film is not only about the romance. It is about a woman who went on to live an
enormous life afterwards because of it.
You would still be telling this story at a hundred years old, and telling it exactly the
same way.

How Much Did ‘Practical Magic’ Make at the Box Office?

Image via Warner Bros.
Image via Warner Bros.
Image via Warner Bros.
Image via Warner Bros.

Image via Warner Bros.

Image via Warner Bros.
Image via Warner Bros.
Image via Warner Bros.
Image via Warner Bros.

Image via Warner Bros.

The recent sequel has failed to make the desired impact at the box office, but how did the first Practical Magic movie fare in theaters? Against a $60 million budget, the film flopped back in 1998 with a global haul of just $68 million. This is despite opening at in October 1998, outperforming fellow debutant Bride of Chucky. It took only four weeks for Practical Magic to drop out of the domestic top 5, all but assuring it’s status as a box office bomb.

Practical Magic is one of the ten most-watched movies on HBO Max in the U.S. Stay tuned to Collider for more.