By Pat French
Sorry Ladies. For a scant minute today it appeared that comedy superstar Tina Fey was to helm a Sequel to the cult classic Hocus Pocus. A site called The Tracking Board alleged that Fey was attached to the Sequel to Disney’s 1993 Halloween Witch romp but this was later disproven by Variety (via Fey’s Agent). Tracking Board also posited that Jenny McCarthy would be on board, but that seems particularly less likely considering that their initial theory was utter malarkey.
The truth of all this, it seems, is that Fey is developing a movie about Witches for Disney. It’s just not a Hocus Pocus sequel. This is a smart move by Fey (I have to imagine that Disney at least TRIED to make it a Hocus Pocus sequel at some stage of the process), she’s too good for dead franchises. According to Tracking Board a Hocus Pocus sequel is still on the table, but I wouldn’t get my hopes up.
Hocus Pocus, for those of you in the LAME-O club, is about three witches from old Salem (played by Sarah Jessica Parker, Kathy Najimy, and the incomparable Bette Midler) who are resurrected by a punk city-kid in an attempt to impress a girl. There’s a talking cat, a musical number, and Halloween hijinks. It is 90’s family-movie gold. Kenny Ortega, who would later helm all three High School Musical flicks, directed this masterpiece of Halloween nostalgia.
It ‘s definitely a bit of a shame that we’re not going to get a Tina Fey treatment of this story. Just spitballing here, but if she were to remake with Amy Poehler, Molly Shannon, and Kristen Wiig I would be over the moon (or possibly possessed by it). Hell, screw it. Why doesn’t Tina Fey make this movie. Forget that ridiculous Expendabelles spin-off that’s in production hell. Bruce Campbell was talking about making a Horror version of the Expendables, why don’t we get a movie where the funniest Comediennes play a bunch of surly witches (sorry Bruce. Love you). It would probably be a hundred times better than any version of the Expendables (sorry Sly. Love you too).
The moral to this story is that you should probably just go rent Hocus Pocus. Or, even better, rent Hocus Pocus and Bridesmaids. Watch them back to back and try and merge the two into one perfect super-movie in your thinker-box. I plan to attempt just such an experiment later with Army of Darkness and First Blood 2.
This has been a special edition of the Sequel Files. Late Skater!
