Fans of the nostalgic cult classic Hocus Pocus (1993) were delighted enough with the Disney Plus exclusives sequel that premiered last September to warrant a record-breaking performance. However, one question was left on everyone’s mind: where was Max Dennison?
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This year will officially mark the original film’s 30th birthday. Although the Halloween family comedy was a box office dud, due to its summertime release date to avoid competing with Disney’s and Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993), the film gained much popularity from reruns on the Disney Channel. Now it’s considered one of Disney’s best Halloween movies, if not one of their best live-action comedies.
So with the sequel coming out all these years later, of course, diehard fans of the Sanderson Sisters were thrilled to finally get more Hocus Pocus in their lives. Midler, Parker, and Najimy all returned to play the three witches, and that was enough to carry the second installment of the franchise. But was it?
At this year’s 90s Con in Connecticut, four other actors from the original Hocus Pocus, Thora Birch, Vinessa Shaw, Jason Marsden, and Omri Katz, had a cast reunion where they answered audience’s questions. And just like you were wondering yourself during the premiere of Hocus Pocus 2 (2022), fans wanted to know why the Dennisons weren’t in the sequel.
Omri Katz, the actor who played Max, answered the question on everyone’s mind by saying, “we weren’t invited to that meeting. So we don’t really know why we weren’t invited.”
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The actors on the panel all elaborated, going on to say that talks about a follow-up to the original had been going around for at least the past ten years, and there was a possibility for working their characters into the script, but as time when on the studio just went a different route. This is all to say that there could have been an earlier version of the sequel’s concept that involved more of the original cast.
Marsden, who voices Binx (and Max in A Goofy Movie (1995), added that he’s “been in this business long enough to not get your hopes up about anything, really.” Marsden also mentioned that one of the executive producers on the movie fought to get Birch, Shaw, and Katz in the sequel, but that with big intellectual properties like these, it isn’t just left up to one person.
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It’s slightly disappointing for fans to know that there could have been a version of the film with all the original characters back, or at least had a cameo. More upsetting is that Jay and Ice (the punks who bullied Max) were also never considered for the sequel. That would have been the chef’s kiss of cameos if the studio had gone in that direction.
Would you have liked to see more of the original cast in the Hocus Pocus sequel? Let Inside The Magic know in the comments.