Practical Magic 2 opened last weekend to numbers nobody in the marketing department was hoping for. The film, reuniting Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman as the Owens sisters two decades after the original, pulled in $30 million domestically and $16 million internationally, a worldwide start of $46 million, according to figures cited by Koimoi from Box Office Mojo.

That's not a disaster. It's just not what was promised.

Studio tracking had pointed to a $40-50 million opening weekend in North America alone. The film landed at the low end of that band and then some, coming in at $30 million domestic. To be fair to the sequel, that figure comfortably beats the original 1998 film's domestic debut, and the first Practical Magic went on to build a cult following over years on cable and streaming that this one is presumably banking on too.

But cult status doesn't pay off a production budget fast. Reports peg the film's budget at $75 million, not counting marketing spend, which studios typically don't disclose. Using the industry rule of thumb that a film needs to gross roughly 2.5 times its production cost to break even worldwide, once you factor in the marketing, distribution cuts and theatre splits, Practical Magic 2 needs an estimated $188 million globally to get into the black.

It's currently sitting at a quarter of that after one weekend.

The reviews haven't helped build momentum either. Practical Magic 2 has landed mixed notices, the kind that don't necessarily kill a film's legs but don't send audiences rushing back for round two on a Saturday either. Susanne Bier directs, with Joey King, Lee Pace, Maisie Williams and Xolo Maridueña rounding out a cast that also brings back Dianne Wiest and Stockard Channing from the original.

What happens next depends almost entirely on word of mouth and how steep the drop is in weekend two. Legacy sequels with built-in nostalgia sometimes hold better than fresh franchises because the audience trickles in over weeks rather than front-loading on opening night. Practical Magic's original cult following, the one that turned a modest 1998 release into a perennial Halloween-season watch, could theoretically do exactly that for the sequel over the coming month.

The film released across 4,146 theatres in North America on September 11, a wide berth that suggests the studio was banking on exactly that kind of slow-burn word of mouth rather than a front-loaded opening. Whether that bet pays off will show up in the numbers over the next two to three weekends, the window that usually decides whether a mid-budget legacy title claws its way toward break-even or settles into a quiet write-off.