Walt Disney is reporting that Hocus Pocus 2 has scored the biggest opening weekend ever for a Disney+ feature film. They have confirmed that this means any movie on Disney+, both streaming originals like Chip & Dale: Rescue Rangers and theatrical-first biggies like Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. There are, shocker, no hard numbers to go with that boast. I’m assuming this means it captured either more viewers in the first Fri-Sun frame than Turning Red (1.7 billion minutes, so says Nielsen) or maybe even (ha ha?) the 2.2 billion minutes viewed in the first whole week for Encanto. We’ll know more when the Nielsen ratings drop in a few weeks, but social media chatter and obviously pre-sold interest makes this specific boast easier to believe.

Let’s assume that the Bette Midler/Sarah Jessica Parker/Kathy Najimy comedy sequel was as big as Disney is claiming. Does that imply that it should have been a theatrical release? Without getting into good/evil here, since this is a conversation about business choices by a large company, the allegedly huge launch swings both ways. First, if Hocus Pocus 2 earned (offhand) more than four times the opening weekend audience of Rescue Rangers (594 million minutes in its late-May debut), that challenges the notion of streaming films outside of Netflix NFLX essentially needing a theatrical release to earn top tier streaming figures. To be fair, Hocus Pocus was a property that only exists because it once existed as a single (critically panned and commercially unsuccessful) theatrical movie.

The film initially earned poor reviews and $45 million worldwide on a $28 million budget, poor even by the standards of kid flicks like Free Willy ($177 million on a $20 million budget) that same summer. It was slowly rediscovered by kids catching it on VHS or cable television, with a certain critical realignment taking place as the kids who grew up enjoying the picture eventually became the ‘adults in the room.’ Would Hocus Pocus 2 would have been enough of a hit to justify a theatrical release? Maybe! I’d argue even a healthy theatrical release wouldn’t have negatively impacted the eventual streaming debut for the nostalgia-driven sequel. Doctor Strange 2 had one of the biggest SVOD debuts of the year after a $955 million global gross.

Turning Red was huge but smaller overall than Encanto after the latter’s 31-day theatrical window. Lightyear bombed with $225 million worldwide from an over/under $200 million budget. Yet, it nabbed 1.3 billion minutes in the first weekend of Disney+ availability, on par with Doctor Strange 2, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings and Turning Red. Whether Disney+ made the movie for theaters or streaming, the movie got made, so the production budget is almost irrelevant. No, I don’t think Disney would have spent much more producing a theatrical Hocus Pocus sequel since the character-specific follow-up wasn’t relying on spectacle. The question is whether the Anne Fletcher-directed sequel would have earned enough in global theatrical earnings to justify whatever was spent (over/under $40 million?) on a theatrical push.

Alleged record-breaking Disney+ streaming viewership does not automatically imply that Hocus Pocus 2 would have been a theatrical hit. Staying at home and making popcorn for the family is a different value proposition than buying five tickets and copious concessions. However, that older audiences can take their kids to the theater as they indulge in generational nostalgia makes it an equation (relatively speaking) closer to Tron: Legacy ($400 million on a $170 million budget) than Blade Runner 2049 ($252 million on a $155 million budget). The Kenny Ortega-directed original was Vudu’s most-rented seasonal Halloween title from at least 2016 to 2020. It was 2020’s biggest Covid-era reissue with $4.8 million domestic. A sequel might pull theatrical grosses large enough to at least cover theatrical marketing expenses.

If Hocus Pocus 2 had grossed (offhand) $100 million worldwide from a $40 million ad spend, that would have been $20 million in raw revenue (plus assorted VOD/DVD-related revenue) for a film that Disney was already going to make for essentially no revenue. However, if it was another Zoolander, No. 2 or Zombieland: Double Tap, long-in-gestation sequels that relied on generational nostalgia and then made about as much ($56 million and $123 million) as their cheaper predecessors ($60 million and $102 million), the film might have been tagged as a preemptive whiff for no good cause. It wouldn’t affect the streaming numbers, but that’s still money lost that didn’t need to be spent. That’s probably why Netflix (probably) won’t go wide theatrical on Glass Onion.

I’m inclined to say ‘roll the dice on theatrical every time,’ but it’s not my money. A well-liked (by the fans) Hocus Pocus 2 opening in late September/early October amid a marketplace so starved for kid flicks that DC League of Super Pets has legged out to $91 million from a $23 million opening from late July feels like a likely theatrical success. However, suppose every studio does this with every big-deal streaming title. In that case, the scarcity that would have benefited Hocus Pocus 2 (and should help Lyle Lyle Crocodile this weekend) would not exist. However, the numbers still imply that theatrical release adds value to a title when it arrives on streaming. If the movie is going to get made regardless, why not aim for revenue?

Hocus Pocus 2 (like Hellraiser) arguably already had increased value from being a follow-up to a theatrical cult favorite, so it was primarily about whether the film would have made money in theaters. This isn’t about good and evil or ‘helping theaters,’ since Disney is releasing Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, Strange World and Avatar: The Way of Water in November and December. It’s about treating Hocus Pocus 2 as a theatrical property because such a notion might create additional revenue. Once the mere idea of a theatrically worthy IP going straight to a (non-Netflix) streaming platform is no longer ‘special,’ and in most cases (Batgirl, Rescue Rangers, etc.), we’ve already reached that point, going theatrical may help theaters and streaming. Once again, live together or die alone.