What would a Hocus Pocus movie be without seeing the Sanderson sisters return to Salem on Halloween night, ready to take their revenge on the town? Hocus Pocus 3 was announced this summer, and according to screenwriter Jen D’Angelo, this could be the story in which Winifred Sanderson finally gets her shot at evening the score against the town that did her wrong, with her sisters by her side, of course.
Speaking to Collider about the film, D’Angelo said:
“With the Sanderson sisters, the thing that makes them so fun is that they really are like herding cats. So I’m like, ‘Yes, Winifred learned a very valuable lesson, she loves her sisters more than anything in the world,’ but she will also just immediately get distracted by whatever’s put in front of her. So if you dangle the carrot of a potential revenge against Salem, which she has always wanted, she might have a backslide where she gets singularly focused on the wrong goal again.”
She went on to talk about the challenges of making a sequel to a movie as beloved as the 1993 film, Hocus Pocus, and how rewarding it has been to have made a second film the fans love as much:
“With Hocus Pocus 2, you had the challenge of revisiting these beloved characters and wanting to really make it worthwhile, this sequel. And I feel like we had so much fun making it, it turned out so well, I’m so thrilled and honored and humbled by all the response that it got.”
We recently reported that D’Angelo gave an update about the upcoming story in an interview with Entertainment Weekly, in which she said:
“We’re still in the story phase, we’re still working on it. We’ve been working on some ideas. It’s been fun to dive back into that world and we have so many directions in which to go and so many new characters to explore. We’ve only scratched the surface of Hannah Waddingham’s mother witch.”
Emmy-winning Ted Lasso actress Hannah Waddingham made her Hocus Pocus debut in the second installment, released in 2022 on Disney+. She played Mother Witch, a sinister woman who gifts the spell book to the young Sanderson sisters. While Waddingham’s return in the upcoming film is not officially set, it sounds like D’Angelo and the team are once again planning a sequel that delves into the character’s past. The screenwriter said “anything’s on the table” for the third installment, and “we for sure want to see them again as adults,” so of course Bette Midler, Sarah Jessica Parker and Kathy Najimy will be courted once again to star.
