Trivia / Hocus Pocus 2

• Acting for Two: Tony Hale plays both Reverend Traske and his descendant, Mayor Traske.
• B-Team Sequel: The original creative team of director Kenny Ortega and screenwriters David Kirschner and Mick Garris are replaced by Anne Fletcher and Jen D’Angelo, respectively - though Kirschner does remain as a producer and receives a story credit as well.
• California Doubling: While Hocus Pocus 2 is still set in Salem, it was actually filmed in Rhode Island.
• Dawson Casting:
  • The three high school girls are played by adult actresses; Whitney Peak (Becca) and Lilia Buckingham (Cassie) were 18 at the time of filming, while Belissa Escobedo (Izzy) is in her 20's.
  • Mike is played by Froy Gutierrez, who's also in his 20's.
  • The Sanderson sisters become a retroactive example in terms of the age gap between them. Bette Midler is 12 years older than Kathy Najimy and 20 years older than Sarah Jessica Parker, which would seem to imply that Winifred, Mary, and Sarah are of Practically Different Generations. But the prologue reveals that the sisters are much closer in age than their actresses, showing them as 16, 14 and 10 years old in the year 1653.
• The Danza: Sarah Jessica Parker reprises her role as Sarah Sanderson.
• Disowned Adaptation: A temporary case with Bette Midler, who had few kind words to say about the Disney Channel sequel when it was first announced, saying that it will probably wind up looking and feeling very cheap and that recasting the Sanderson sisters was a bad idea. Ironically, she, Sarah Jessica Parker and Kathy Najimy ended up returning in the end.
• Meaningful Release Date:
  • The film was released on September 30th, right on the start of the Halloween season (as opposed to the original film, which was released in July, despite being a Halloween film).
  • The film was also released on the 52nd birthday of Tony Hale, who plays Jefry Traske and his descendant Reverend Traske in the film.
• Promoted Fanboy: Belissa Escobedo loves the first Hocus Pocus, and says that she watches it every Halloween. Now she's starring in the official sequel alongside the original cast members.
• Real-Life Relative: In the Latin American Spanish dub, Sarah is voiced by Diana Galvan Santos, who is the daughter of Diana Santos, who voiced her in the second dubbed version of the first film. It helps a lot in this case that both mother and daughter really sound alike.
• Refitted for Sequel: The Sanderson Sisters going shopping in a Walgreens is a reference to a deleted scene from the original film in which the sisters go shopping for ingredients to make candy crows.
• Role Reprise: Returning from the first Hocus Pocus are Bette Midler as Winifred "Winnie" Sanderson, Sarah Jessica Parker as Sarah Sanderson, Kathy Najimy as Mary Sanderson and Doug Jones as Billy Butcherson.
  • The Brazilian dub brings back Carmen Sheila as Mary Sanderson and Hércules Franco as Billy Butcherson.
• Sequel Gap: About 29 years separate this film from its predecessor.
• Technology Marches On: Played for Laughs with a deliberate Continuity Nod to the first film. In the original, Winifred rides a broom, Sarah a mop, and Mary a vacuum cleaner. Here, Winnie still gets a broom, but her sisters get "updated" versions of the other cleaning tools: Sarah takes off on a flying Swiffer Wet Jet, while Mary sky-surfs on a pair of Roombas.
• Tie-In Cereal: Kelloggs released a Hocus Pocus 2 cereal in September 2022, cartoon illustrations of the Sanderson Sisters front and center on the box.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Original screenwriter Mick Garris was originally working on the script, with the potential for it to become a Disney Channel Original Movie. Eventually, the project was announced as a reboot. Ultimately, this would be scrapped in favor of a proper sequel for Disney+.
  • Adam Shankman was originally attached to direct before dropping out due to conflicts with another Disney+ project, Disenchanted (2022).
  • Thora Birch was originally approached to reprise her role as Dani Dennison from the first film, but scheduling conflicts with Netflix's Wednesday prevented her from doing so. Dani still appears in a flashback sequence that happened in the first film, but was evidently portrayed by a Fake Shemp.
  • Larry Bagby, who played Ernie "Ice" in the original film, was interested in reprising his role for the sequel, with his agent submitting him for a cameo as the Salem Magic Shoppe's owner, but Bagby was never contacted to audition.
  • During a Hocus Pocus reunion panel at the 2023 90's Con in Hartford, Connecticut, Thora Birch, Vinessa Shaw, Jason Marsden, and Omri Katz revealed that there were plans to incorporate their characters into the script for this film before Disney decided to go in a different direction for the sequel.
  • According to costume designer Salvador Perez on The Art of Kindness with Robert Peterpaul podcast, the original ending was supposed to have the Sanderson Sisters perform "The Witches Are Back" in Purgatory complete with them in gold costumes, but was scrapped because it was deemed too expensive, and the final film had them performing the song in a standard recording booth.

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