For now, fans will have to make do with Hocus Pocus 2, which premieres Sept. 30. Midler said she pushed for the sequel herself, even requesting her old Winifred costume—which she didn’t get—once she started seeing how popular the character was.
“I came as Winnie here and there, for this benefit or that benefit, and I realized there was something going on,” the First Wives Club star shared. “As I watched it progress, I’d call the studio once a year to ask, ‘How about it?’ It wasn’t until about three years ago that they advocated for it, and movement started.”
The sequel focuses on three new Salem teenage girls (Whitney Peak, Belissa Escobedo and Lilia Buckingham) who accidentally reunite the Sanderson sisters 30 years after the 1993 original and must vanquish them by sunrise. While the new girls aren’t witches, Midler says the trio has “the potential to become witches” and “to follow in our footsteps.”
“Pitting the young against the veterans, it’s a conflict that audiences like to see,” Midler predicted. “Who’s going to win? Or, is anybody going to win? It’s well thought-out and constructed, and it’ll be satisfying because it’s conflict, but conflict in a great special effects way, and a great magical way.”