Did You Know The Movie ‘Practical Magic’ Was Cursed By a Real Witch?
You can’t make this stuff up! Like something perfect for a movie, the hit 1990s movie Practical Magic was supposedly cursed by a real witch, according to the film’s director Griffin Dunne.
“While I was developing it, I was never quite sure I had a real handle on the movie because, quite honestly, witches had no great interest to me,” Griffin said to Vulture. “But I loved the book and I liked the setting and when I was working with this witch consultant, it occurred to me that I was making a movie about something I do know a lot about — strong women. I grew up in a house with a strong mother and my grandmother.”
He added: “So I had three generations of formidable women and when I got that into my head, I realized it’s not really about spells and spell books and all that — it’s about a legacy being passed from one generation to another. That helped me understand it, and that understanding came out of these conversations I had with this witch consultant.”
Griffin hired a witch consultant to watch rehearsals for the movie, and they put her in a nice hotel. But she wasn’t pleased.
“‘You’re not going to buy me off with a hotel room. I want a percentage of the movie. I’m going to have my own Practical Magic cookbook,’” the witch supposedly said.
When the producer said no, the witch said: “I’m going to put a curse on you. I’m putting a curse on this movie, and I’m putting a curse on Griffin.”
He later said her threats were terrifying, and she left messages where she appeared to be speaking in tongues. She eventually sued Warner Brothers.
“So I give the legal department the tape and they can’t listen to it all the way through, either,” recalled Dunne. “They’re so freaked out by it, they just pay the witch off. I don’t know how much, but enough to make her go away.”
Clearly the curse didn’t work (or maybe the money helped).