July 16 - Hocus Pocus

Image copyright Disney

On this day, in 1993, Walt Disney Pictures released the Halloween comedy Hocus Pocus. Pocus started life in the early Eighties. Screenwriter Mick Garris wrote a film about a boy who'd been turned into a cat three centuries ago by witches, based on an idea that producer David Kirschner came up with. That script was sold to Disney in 1984 and was dark,  scary, full of 12 year olds and called Halloween House. It languished in development hell for almost a decade, undergoing severe rewrites, gaining and losing cast and directors and generally going nowhere. Then, in 1992, Bette Midler caught wind of the project, said she wanted to do it (in the role that was originally written for Cloris Leachman) and suddenly all the lights on the movie turned green.

Disney hired Kenny Ortega to direct the film, which was an unconventional choice. Kenny had been a choreographer for years with classics like Dirty Dancing and Ferris Bueller's Day Off under his dance belt. While a choreographer isn't that far off the mark from a director, the only thing Kenny had directed up to this point was the movie Newsies, which wasn't a hit Broadway show yet (or even a cult classic film). It was a little picture that had flopped terribly at the box office. Kenny offered the lead role of Max Dennison, the virgin who accidentally resurrects the Sanderson sisters, to Leonardo DiCaprio, but Leo was too busy earning an Oscar nomination for What's Eating Gilbert Grape to accept. Omri Katz got the role instead and filming suitably began in October 1992, with the production being completed a mere four months later.

Image copyright Disney

When Hocus Pocus was released, it did better than Newsies, but not by much. It did gross more than its budget, but with advertising costs factored in it probably gave Disney a good $15 million tax write off. At this point you might be scratching your head and saying wait a minute. This is a Halloween movie and it was released in July. What gives? The official story is that The Nightmare Before Christmas was chosen as the studio's Halloween entry that year and management didn't want Hocus to interfere with that movie's returns. So they randomly released it earlier. A much truer story would be that management didn't think much of Hocus and didn't care when it was released, it was always going to be a tax write off to them. Except, in the end, it wasn't.

Owning a property means that you get to use that property over and over again, however you wish. When the Halloween season rolled around every year on the Disney Channel, and later on ABC Family, Disney needed content to show. Hocus Pocus became an annual tradition on both channels, and since people were seeing it at the right time of year, gained bigger and bigger audiences with each showing. It's gotten to the point now that Freeform (what ABC Family is currently called) actually breaks viewership records every year and Hocus Pocus has become a tentpole event for them. Excitement over the movie has led to the center stage show at Walt Disney World's Mickey's Not So Scary Halloween Party being based on the Sanderson sisters. Hocus' three stars, Bette Midler, Kathy Najimy and Sarah Jessica Parker (all of whom have had successful careers since) have even expressed interest in making a sequel. So far Disney has yet to commit to the sequel the fans want, but rumors continue to fly about a crappy made-for-tv remake. Like I said. When you own a property, you get to do with it whatever you wish. Not necessarily what the fans wish.