Disney is making Hocus Pocus 3, because of course they are. The Sanderson Sisters are coming back for a third round of witch-based nostalgia mining, and nobody should be surprised.
Bette Midler, Sarah Jessica Parker, and Kathy Najimy are all returning, because why wouldn't they? The first film bombed in 1993 but became a cult Halloween classic through endless cable airings. The sequel hit Disney+ in 2022 and became the service's most-watched original film that year, despite being aggressively mediocre. Now we're getting a third, because streaming services need content and nostalgia is the only guaranteed commodity.
Let's be honest: Hocus Pocus 2 existed purely to capitalize on millennial nostalgia for the original. It had no reason to exist beyond brand exploitation, and it worked perfectly. Disney got subscribers, viewers got a hit of childhood comfort, and nobody pretended this was about artistic vision.
Hocus Pocus 3 will be more of the same. The Sanderson Sisters will return from the dead (again), threaten some children (again), sing a musical number (again), and get defeated through the power of sisterhood or true love or whatever the algorithm determines resonates with focus groups. It'll be competently made, mildly amusing, and utterly disposable.
And that's fine! Not every film needs to be Parasite. Sometimes people want to watch Bette Midler chew scenery as a witch while wearing period costumes and cracking jokes about modern technology. There's a market for that, and Disney knows exactly how to serve it.
The depressing part is that this is what legacy entertainment companies do now: find IP that triggered dopamine responses in childhood, resurrect it with the original cast, and market it as an "event" rather than the soulless IP exploitation it actually is. Hocus Pocus 3 joins Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, Top Gun: Maverick, and every other legacy sequel designed to make middle-aged people feel feelings.
