How ‘Hocus Pocus 2’ Became a Streaming Hit After Original Bombed at the Box Office
variety.comHunter Ingram Nearly four decadesago, in 1984, David Kirschner arrived early for a meeting with then-Disney executive Jeffrey Katzenberg carrying a broomstick, a mop and a hollowed-out Electrolux vacuum.
He called ahead to request access to the conference room a half hour before the pitch meeting began to hang the trio of centuries-spanning cleaning instruments from the ceiling with fishing line.
He also brought his eighth-grade biology textbook wrapped in a leathery material, hoping it looked enough like human skin, and a grocery store candle, on which he hand-drew Latin witchcraft imagery he couldn’t translate and toasted in an oven to look aged. “This wasn’t exactly Disney stuff,” Kirschner laughs now.
The night before, the kids in his neighborhood also drew the hallmarks of Halloween — a black cat, a patch of pumpkins — on bags filled with candy corn, which he placed around the conference room. “When they walked in, I wanted them to smell Halloween,” Kirschner says. “I wanted them to smell their childhood.” That day, he pitched what would become “Hocus Pocus,” Disney’s enduring 1993 Halloween classic starring Bette Midler, Kathy Najimy and Sarah Jessica Parker as the fearsome-yet-kooky Sanderson sisters resurrected in the present day.
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