Warner Bros. Has Not Had a $100 Million Domestic Film All Year. It Is Counting on Witches.

Here is Warner Bros.' 2026, in order, domestic:

• Wuthering Heights (13 Feb) — opened $32.8M, finished $84,001,072. Still the studio's best of the year.
• The Bride! (6 Mar) — opened $7.1M, finished $12.7M on a reported $80M budget.
• They Will Kill You (27 Mar) — $10.9M.
• Lee Cronin's The Mummy (17 Apr) — $29.2M on $22M.
• Mortal Kombat II (8 May) — opened $38,501,177, the studio's biggest opening of the year; finished $79.8M.
• Supergirl (26 Jun) — opened $37.1M, finished $72.4M on $170M.
• Evil Dead Burn (10 Jul) — $32.2M on $20M.
• The End of Oak Street (14 Aug) — $50.8M on $85M.

The claim holds: nothing has cleared $100 million domestic. The high-water mark is $84 million, and that run ended on 9 April.

Two qualifications a careful reader should have. Worldwide is a different picture — Wuthering Heights ($241.7M), Mortal Kombat II ($129.5M), Supergirl ($126.4M) and The End of Oak Street ($114.6M) all cleared $100M globally. The drought is specifically domestic. And Coyote vs. Acme does not count — Warner Bros. made it and then sold it; it is a Ketchup Entertainment release, and at $33.8M after two weekends it has already out-earned four of the eight films above across their entire runs.

What is actually being forecast, and by whom

The $40–50 million figure now attached to Practical Magic 2 is real, but it is worth knowing what it is. It comes from Boxoffice Pro's long-range forecast, which is an editorial projection, not studio or NRG tracking. And it has moved twice in three weeks on no publicly disclosed new data:

• 14 August: $30–40 million.
• 21 August: $35–45 million.
• 28 August, and again on 4 September: $40–50 million.

No trade has published a tracking number. The other figure in circulation, also $40–50 million, was attributed by one outlet to two enthusiast forum trackers rather than to any research firm.

One thing to bin outright: a headline asking whether the film could take "the biggest September debut of all time." That record is $123,403,419, set by It on 8 September 2017. The article's own body concedes the sequel will not approach it. And It was a Warner Bros. release — so the studio being congratulated for possibly reaching $40 million in September already holds the September ceiling, three times higher.

Warner Bros. moved a superhero film off this date to make room

On 6 February 2026, Warner Bros. moved Practical Magic 2 up a week, from 18 September to 11 September, and pushed DC's Clayface off that date to 23 October as a "Halloween event film."

So the date now belongs to a 28-year-old romantic fantasy whose original lost money — and it was taken from the DC slate in a year when DC handed the studio Supergirl: a $170 million production that grossed $126.4 million worldwide and is the studio's largest write-down of 2026. The witches did not merely arrive during Warner Bros.' superhero problem. They were scheduled into the hole it left.

One weekend may equal the original's entire domestic run

The 1998 Practical Magic, directed by Griffin Dunne, opened to $13,104,694 at number one and finished at roughly $46.8 million domestic, $68.3 million worldwide, against a budget reported as anywhere from $60 to $75 million depending on which database you trust. It drew a B− CinemaScore and 30% on Rotten Tomatoes, from 108 reviews.

(The 24% figure that also circulates could not be substantiated on Rotten Tomatoes. Use 30%, with the review count.)

If the sequel lands anywhere in the forecast range, it will take in three days roughly what the original took in its entire North American run, and three to four times the original's opening weekend.

The sharper edge is underneath. The original's audience score is 73% against the critics' 30% — a 43-point gap. Warner Bros. is not reviving a hit. It is monetising a 28-year argument between critics and audiences that the audience won, on home video and October rewatches.

Details to get right

The release date is Friday 11 September. Warner Bros.' own site and Rotten Tomatoes both list 10 September, which is almost certainly Thursday previews, though no preview announcement has been published. The trades, Wikipedia and The-Numbers all say the 11th.

Joey King plays Kylie. Maisie Williams plays Antonia. At least one trade has this reversed. The check is straightforward: the director's widely-quoted explanation of the recasting is specifically about replacing Evan Rachel Wood, who played Kylie in 1998, with Joey King.

Cast: Sandra Bullock (Sally), Nicole Kidman (Gillian), Dianne Wiest (Jet), Stockard Channing (Franny), King, Williams, Lee Pace, Xolo Maridueña, Solly McLeod. Directed by Susanne Bier, who has directed Bullock in Bird Box and Kidman twice. Screenplay by Akiva Goldsman — co-writer of the 1998 film — and Georgia Pritchett, adapting Alice Hoffman's 2021 novel The Book of Magic. Shot at Leavesden and in Devon from July to September 2025. Runtime 1h50. Rating not confirmed. Budget never disclosed — do not trust a figure that appears without a source.

Bier on the recasting: "The kids in the story are right out of college, so it wasn't really a question… with Joey and Maisie it just felt completely right."

Bullock, asked about a third film: "We'll do a number three if this takes off, and we'll pass the torch to the girls."

The lesson of the studio's own year

In February, a trade headline read: "Wuthering Heights to Heat Up Box Office With $50 Million-Plus Debut." It opened to $32.8 million — roughly a third under — and then legged out to $84 million, and is still the best domestic result Warner Bros. has had all year.

Same studio, same calendar year: a projection that missed by a third produced the year's best film. That is the frame to hold against a $40–50 million number that has been revised upward twice in three weeks by the outlet that produced it.

No review score exists yet. Rotten Tomatoes shows zero reviews and no Tomatometer as of today; the embargo has not lifted. Anything published before Wednesday cannot cite one.

What happens next weekend is also worth watching: Sony's Resident Evil arrives on 18 September, forecast at the identical $40–50 million range. Warner Bros.' best shot at ending Spider-Man's six-weekend run at number one has a one-week window before somebody else takes the slot.