Everyone gets so excited for Halloween basically for one reason, & no it’s not because of free candy! It’s obviously because of Hocus Pocus... DUH! If you’re anything like me, you know the movie all too well, reciting the lines & making references on a daily basis. The classic movie has gained intense popularity since it’s release in 1993.
Fans of Hocus Pocus will love these fun factoids! It was originally a very different movie from the one Bette Midler (Winifred Sanderson), Sarah Jessica Parker (Sarah Sanderson), and Kathy Najimy (Mary Sanderson) starred in all those years ago.
David Kirschner, the producer of Hocus Pocus, explained that it began “as a bedtime story” for his two daughters. His wife suggested he “do something” with the story. So he did. Mick Garris wrote the first draft of the movie, which was then called Halloween House. “David Kirschner, who was one of the writers of An American Tail for Steven Spielberg, had this great idea about children in Salem, Massachusetts, coming up against the three Sanderson sisters, who were resurrected from the Salem of 1692, and he’d sold it to Disney,” Garris said in the video, according to Entertainment Weekly. Garris and Kirschner organized a pitch meeting which has LOTS of candy corn, 25 lbs actually, for Spielberg’s company, Amblin Entertainment. Spielberg liked the idea of the movie but ended up passing on it for one specific reason. “He loved it until he found out that Disney was already involved,” Garris recalled. “At that time, Disney and Amblin were very competitive in the family-film market, so neither of them wanted to be in business with the other. But it was very close to being a project with Steven Spielberg,” he added.
Kenny Ortega, who had previously directed Newsies in 1992, & also High School Musical later on, ended up directing Hocus Pocus, and as he said fans still stop him today to discuss the film. Garris wrote the first draft of Halloween House in the 1980s and developed a scarier version than what audiences saw in Hocus Pocus. “What I had written originally was about 12-year-olds,” Garris said before adding, “The kids being younger and in more jeopardy was certainly something more explicitly frightening.” Garris said the script went through numerous rewrites and changes over the years before being produced. The kids in the movie were more grown-up, 16-years-old, while the tone became “broadly comedic,” Garris said. Headless Billy Butcherson remained in the script from the first to final draft. Another later addition, but still a fun one was the scene featuring director Garry Marshall and his sister, Penny Marshall, as a married couple (Yes... Master with the Clarke Bars!) Rumors about a sequel have been circulating A follow up to the original is currently in the works but Parker, Midler, Najimy, Thora Birch, who played Dani), Omri Katz, who played Max, and the rest of the original cast won’t be returning. So really... .Does a second one matter? Probably not.
