Hollywood News Today: Why Hocus Pocus 2 Is Trending Again Days After Halloween — By Kristan Stewart, November 8, 2026
Hocus Pocus 2 climbed back into Disney+’s US Top 10. It ranked as the streamer’s ninth most-watched movie in the United States at reporting. Days after Halloween, search interest surged on Google Trends in the US.
The 2022 sequel brings back Bette Midler, Sarah Jessica Parker and Kathy Najimy as the Sanderson sisters. Disney announced the new project in May 2026, with all three stars returning, but no release date yet.
The surge was first captured in ScreenRant’s Halloween-weekend viewing guide published October 30.
It reported that Hocus Pocus 2 had “just become a Disney+ streaming sensation again.”
It stood as the streamer’s ninth most-watched movie in the United States.
The timing matters because the guide covered the October 31 to November 1 weekend.
That was the exact window when families settle in for one last scare.
The film’s climb came alongside Coraline, which sat fifth on the same chart.
A few days later, Google Trends showed the sequel spiking again.
It drew more than 500 searches, as the post-Halloween rewatch wave rolled on.
None of this is a new release. Hocus Pocus 2 premiered on Disney+ on September 27, 2022. Directed by Anne Fletcher, it brings back Bette Midler as Winifred Sanderson. Sarah Jessica Parker is Sarah Sanderson and Kathy Najimy is Mary Sanderson. They are the same trio who made the 1993 original a Halloween staple.
This time, three teenagers accidentally bring the sisters back in modern-day Salem. Moreover, the witches set out to regain their power before the night is over. The film runs 107 minutes and streams on Disney+ and Hulu. Audiences may enjoy the reunion of the original cast and the film’s playful energy.
The sequel works because the original never really went away. In the 1993 film, the Sanderson sisters were hanged in 1693 Salem for practicing witchcraft, only to return three centuries later when a teenager lights the Black Flame Candle on Halloween night. Midler’s Winifred leads the trio, Parker’s Sarah floats through the film singing children into a trance, and Najimy’s Mary sniffs out children while riding a vacuum cleaner — the original film’s most famous sight gag. The three performances are the franchise: take the sisters out and there is no Hocus Pocus at all.
What makes the current moment striking is how unlikely the original’s afterlife once looked.
Hocus Pocus opened in theaters on July 16, 1993.
It was a Halloween movie released in the middle of summer. It was directed by Kenny Ortega from a screenplay by Mick Garris and Neil Cuthbert.
It opened in fourth place with 8.1 million dollars against a 28 million dollar budget.
It finished its first theatrical run with 39.5 million dollars.
Critics were lukewarm.
However, the film holds a 38 percent approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Disney walked away from what looked like a flop.
Television saved it. Annual October broadcasts on Disney’s cable channels turned the film into a yearly appointment, and home video kept it alive between Halloweens until a whole generation had grown up watching it with their own children. The numbers eventually caught up: re-releases pushed the film’s lifetime theatrical gross to 53.2 million dollars, and in October 2020, with theaters starved for product during the pandemic, a re-release in 2,570 theaters took 1.9 million dollars in a single weekend. A summer flop had become, by slow accumulation, one of the most durable Halloween titles in American pop culture.
That is the engine behind the Hocus Pocus 2 trend.
The sequel is not discovered. It is revisited by the same audience that made the original a ritual.
Every October, the same cycle repeats. The original on cable; the sequel on Disney+.
The 2022 film’s ninth-place finish on the Disney+ movie chart is the clearest sign yet that the rewatch has become as much a part of the holiday as the film itself.
The sequel itself was a long time coming. Disney waited 29 years to bring the sisters back, and when cameras finally rolled, they did so from October 2021 through January 2022 under Fletcher’s direction. The writers were Mick Garris, Blake Harris, David Kirschner and Jen D’Angelo — Garris and Kirschner had been there since the original — and the production made a deliberate break from the first film’s geography.
Hocus Pocus 2 was filmed entirely in Rhode Island, not Salem. The 1600s flashback village was built from scratch at Chase Farm Park in Lincoln, where crews put up eight structures, some two stories tall. In Providence, the Cranston Street Armory served as a sound stage for flying and stunt work, while Moses Brown School and La Salle Academy stood in for the girls’ high school, and the Walgreens on Pitman Street hosted the scene where the sisters run wild in a drugstore. Newport played modern Salem: Washington Square became the Salem Scare Fest, a concert stage went up in front of the 1739 Colony House, and the night cemetery scenes were shot at Lakeside-Carpenter Cemetery in East Providence.
The new cast gave the sequel its own center of gravity. Whitney Peak, Belissa Escobedo and Lilia Buckingham play the three teenagers who light the candle this time, with Sam Richardson, Tony Hale and Froy Gutierrez in support, and Doug Jones returning as Billy Butcherson, the zombie the sisters raised in the original. Hannah Waddingham appears as the Mother Witch, the figure who gave the sisters their powers in the 1600s flashback. The film’s trick is balance: the teenagers carry the plot, but the sisters carry the movie.
The other reason the Hocus Pocus 2 trending spike matters is what comes next. Disney announced Hocus Pocus 3 in May 2026, with Midler, Parker and Najimy all returning, and the announcement turned a rewatch story into a franchise story overnight. There is no release date yet and no filming location confirmed, which is exactly the point: the third film exists as a promise, not a production, and every surge in interest in the first two films reads as a vote for the third.
What the third film will actually be is still anyone’s guess, and the honest answer is that almost nothing is confirmed beyond the trio’s return. No plot details have been announced, no director has been named, and no start date has been set. If the production does return to Massachusetts, the original’s locations are still standing and easy to find — Pioneer Village, where the 1693 opening was filmed; the Ropes Mansion, Allison’s house; Old Town Hall, the outside of the town Halloween party; and the Dennison house on Ocean Avenue, still a private home. For now, though, Hocus Pocus 3 is a title and a cast, and the waiting is part of the story.
For viewers catching up, the streaming picture is simple. The original Hocus Pocus streams on Disney+, and the sequel streams on Disney+ and Hulu.
That availability is a large part of why the post-Halloween surge happened. Additionally, the sequel’s trending wave is a streaming story as much as nostalgia. It shows chart movement that happens when a film sits exactly where its audience already is.
The pattern is bigger than one film. Disney’s Halloween catalog has become a reliable October engine, and legacy sequels are its most dependable fuel: a known title, a familiar cast, and an audience that returns without being asked. Hocus Pocus 2’s return to the Top 10 four years after its release shows the model still works. The sequel did not need a new marketing campaign to climb the chart — it needed a calendar date and a trio of witches.
What happens next depends on Disney, and on how long the studio lets the third film stay a promise. The trio’s return is the one fact fans can hold on to, and it is a considerable one: thirty-three years after the original, the same three actresses are still the franchise. Until a date or a location is announced, the rewatch wave is the news — and the rewatch wave, this year at least, is still going.
So the Sanderson sisters are back on the charts, days after Halloween, with a third film on the way and no release date in sight. The Hocus Pocus 2 trending surge is a reminder that some movies do not need a premiere to trend — they need a holiday, a streaming queue and an audience that never really stopped watching. Which Sanderson sister is your favorite — Winnie, Sarah or Mary? Tell us below.
Source: Hocus Pocus 2’s 9th-place Disney+ US ranking, the returning trio and the three-teenagers plot, via ScreenRant, ScreenRant; the Hocus Pocus 3 announcement in May 2026, the trio’s return, the Rhode Island filming locations and the streaming homes, via FanBolt, FanBolt; the original film’s July 16, 1993 release, opening weekend and lifetime gross, via Wikipedia, Wikipedia; the Google Trends US spike for “hocus pocus 2” on November 4, 2026, via Google Trends, all re-checked at build time.
