#How Hocus Pocus Went From Flop To Halloween Cult Classic

Most of the time when a movie fails so gloriously up front, it’s doomed to play occasionally on cable, with home video releases relegated to discount bins across the country. It’s not good. But something happened with “Hocus Pocus,” which was originally released on VHS in January 1994. Slowly but surely, people started to discover it, be it through home video or cable TV rotation. The movie was later released on DVD in 2002, and that’s when its audience truly started to blossom.

While there are no hard sales figures available, “Hocus Pocus” regularly tops the physical media sales charts around Halloween (per Media Play News), and it’s estimated to do around $1 million in sales each October alone. It has had a long life, getting released on VHS, DVD, Blu-ray, and 4K Ultra HD. It had years to generate revenue before Blu-ray/DVD sales began declining more recently, and that mild success has surely added up over the years. Moreover, “Hocus Pocus” was a staple on ABC and Disney Channel in the late ’90s and 2000s, eventually becoming part of ABC Family’s “13 Nights of Halloween.” The ratings were typically great, proving that the movie’s audience was growing.

As further evidence that the cult of “Hocus Pocus” has formed in amazing fashion, when movie theaters were on life support last year, the film amazingly topped the box office in the first weekend of October, taking in around $1 million. This was in no small part thanks to drive-ins, which also found new life in 2020. Ultimately, “Hocus Pocus” earned $4.8 million last year, making it the year’s highest-grossing re-release and topping “The Empire Strikes Back” ($2.4 million) by quite a lot.