Bette Midler, with Kathy Najimy and Sarah Jessica Parker in ‘Hocus Pocus’

By Jen Chaney

When Hocus Pocus opened in theaters in July 1993, it didn’t seem to put a spell on anyone. Janet Maslin of The New York Times called the Bette Midler-starring comedy about three Salem witches thrust into present day “an unholy mess.” Roger Ebert’s review said the movie’s three bumbling spell-casters “don’t have personalities; they have behavior patterns and decibel levels.” The Associated Press was even harsher: “The only real curses in this film,” wrote Patricia Bibby, “will be yours as you walk up the aisle to leave.”

Ticket sales weren’t any better. The movie debuted in fourth place at the weekend box office, quickly dropped out of the top 10, and ultimately earned just $39.5 million, a disappointment for its studio, Walt Disney. (It probably didn’t help that it opened against the equally family-friendly Free Willy and had to compete against dino juggernaut Jurassic Park.) Almost as soon as it arrived, Hocus Pocus seemed poised to go poof and disappear.

But over the past two decades, the movie about a trio of resurrected witchy women has come back from the dead, enchanting old fans and luring in new ones on DVD, streaming video, and annual TV airings; sparking social media love from fans who never met an image of Midler’s Winifred Sanderson they couldn’t turn into a meme; emerging as a central part of Walt Disney World’s Halloween celebration; and possibly spawning a sequel, if the film’s creator has his way. What It’s a Wonderful Life is to Christmas, Hocus Pocus has officially become to Halloween. It only took a couple of decades — give or take. How did it happen? We asked two of the men who crafted its story, and others, to explain.

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Hocus Pocus began as a bedtime story that David Kirschner, producer and co-writer of the film, told his two young daughters in the 1980s. That narrative’s basic elements would, eventually, inform the movie’s plot: A 17th-century boy named Thackery Binx tries to save his sister from three evil witches, who turn him into a cat, but who are eventually put to death by the townspeople of Salem, Mass. Three hundred years later, the witches reappear on Halloween night, after a virgin lights the black flame candle. Kirschner’s ideas sprang from his longtime love of All Hallows’ Eve as well as some personal events from his childhood: Binx the cat, for example, was named after Inks, an actual black cat he took in as a boy. “Halloween is a huge deal in our home, and it has been since our daughters were little,” Kirschner says. “It speaks to me in a way that becomes so emotional for me and always has.”

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Eventually Kirschner — who had recently convinced Steven Spielberg to make An American Tail and would later produce the Child’s Play movies — took his spooky-ish yarn to Walt Disney Studios. On the day of his big pitch meeting in 1984, Kirschner amped up the Halloween razzle-dazzle. He suspended witches’ brooms from the ceiling of the meeting room, displayed pictures of black cats drawn by children in his neighborhood, and cut a slit in the bottom of a 15-pound bag of candy corn, arranging the orange pieces so they spilled onto a table. Once the execs arrived, he explained that Halloween was becoming a more popular, profitable holiday, and that he had an idea for a movie that would allow families to celebrate it together, by watching a group of kids from modern-day Salem triumph over a trio of youth-obsessed sister witches who want to steal their souls.

“By the time I got to the parking lot, one of the executives — not [then-Disney chairman Jeffrey] Katzenberg, but one of the executives — ran after me,” Kirschner recalls. “And he said, ‘Don’t take it anywhere else. We want to do it.’”

Getting the project off the ground would take longer than anticipated. Through his Spielberg connection, Kirschner invited Mick Garris, then writing for the Spielberg-produced TV series Amazing Stories, to work on the screenplay, which was initially titled Halloween House. Eleven or 12 writers would work on the script after him, including Neil Cuthbert, the third officially credited writer on the project.