‘Hocus Pocus’ Reunion Reveals Leonardo DiCaprio’s Audition, Binx’s Voice Change & More Set Secrets

Barb Oates 40 seconds ago

Hocus Pocus Cast 90s Con 2026 — 90s Con/That's 4 Entertainment via Facebook

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Director Kenny Ortega and several original cast members of the 1993 film Hocus Pocus reunited at 90s Con.
The panel featured stories about the casting process.
Ortega and the cast reflected on the film’s enduring legacy as a Halloween tradition.

The affection for the 1993 film Hocus Pocus was on full display at 90s Con in Hartford, Connecticut, on October 18, 2026, where fans packed the theater to see director Kenny Ortega reunite with Hocus Pocus stars Omri Katz, Thora Birch, Vinessa Shaw, Jason Marsden, Larry Bagby, and Tobias Jelinek.

For plenty of movie fans, Halloween season doesn’t officially begin until somebody lights the Black Flame Candle. More than three decades after Hocus Pocus first brought the Sanderson sisters back from the dead, the movie has become as much a part of October as jack-o’-lanterns, trick-or-treating and trying to decide which candy to keep for yourself.

During their panel, the group revisited the auditions, performances and behind-the-scenes experiences that helped turn one movie into an annual tradition.

For Ortega, whose career has brought together music, dance and storytelling in projects including High School Musical, the weekend marked his first convention appearance. Joining his Hocus Pocus cast for the occasion made that debut especially meaningful, and he noted that they hadn’t been together since the movie’s 25th anniversary.

“I love this cast with all of my heart,” he said. “My heart is full.”

Throughout the conversation, Ortega returned to the qualities he saw in the young performers who became Max Dennison, Dani Dennison, Allison, Thackery Binx and the bullies who made an already complicated Halloween even worse.

“I always look for the promise,” he explained. “When I see someone walk into a room and reveal a part of themselves, that fascinates me.”

The actors, he remembered, gave him plenty to work with. “It wasn’t going to be about me always guiding, directing, suggesting,” he said. “They all came to the party every single day and brought so much with them, each and every one of them.”

90s Con/That’s 4 Entertainment

Katz, who played Max, learned for the first time during this panel that his path to Salem involved competition from another young actor who would go on to have a pretty successful movie career of his own: Leonardo DiCaprio.

“I did not know I was competing against Leonardo,” Katz said. “However, him and I used to go out on a lot of auditions together. We were always competitors.”

For Jelinek, the audition process involved a different surprise. Before becoming Jay, he also tried out for Max, arriving with a look that apparently suggested another direction.

“I showed up in a Red Lobster T-shirt because I was just a teenager in Santa Barbara,” Jelinek recalled. After taking a look at him, the casting team offered another opportunity. “We have another role. Take 15 minutes outside,” Jelinek remembered being told.

Jay’s partner in petty crime, Ice, came courtesy of Bagby, who found inspiration in a character he already knew. “I played Sonny in the play Grease, and that was basically the musical version of Ice,” Bagby said. “I had the hat, the whole laugh and all that. So I just kind of took what I was doing there and incorporated it.”

The audition also introduced him to Jelinek, beginning a partnership that would outlast their characters’ ill-advised encounter with the Sanderson sisters. “I know we have a Polaroid still from that casting session,” Bagby said.

Ortega enjoyed the difference between the actors and the troublemakers they brought to the screen. “Sometimes the nicest people make the best jerks,” he observed.

**Who provided the voice of Hocus Pocus‘ cat Thackery Binx?**

The movie’s most memorable transformation, of course, belonged to Thackery Binx. Sean Murray played the human character, while Marsden supplied the voice that accompanied both the boy and the beloved black cat.

“This happens in film more often than you think. Decisions get changed,” Marsden explained of the choice to replace the original voice. “So I auditioned. I promised Kenny I would do a good job, and he gave it to me.”

For Ortega, hearing that voice settled the matter. “Everybody fell in love with the voice of Binx,” he recalled. “Everyone realized that was who Binx needed to be.”

The performers playing the film’s young heroes also found themselves developing relationships that reflected what audiences saw onscreen. Birch, who played Max’s younger sister Dani, remembered those bonds taking shape over time.

“It wasn’t like an instant family. I think it was something that grew over the course of filming,” she said. “We all had chemistry right away, but I think our roles informed the relationships that we formed on the set.”

Ortega praises Thora Birch and cast for keeping up with the A-Listers

HOCUS POCUS, Thora Birch (witch hat), Vinessa Shaw, Omri Katz (rear), 1993, © Buena Vista/courtesy Everett Collection

Buena Vista/Everett Collection

For Birch, the experience also marked a change in how she understood her profession.

“This was really that age in my life when I realized that I was also developing a work ethic and treating it as a job,” she recalled.

She was still a child, but Ortega remembered a performer whose command of a scene could hold its own alongside Bette Midler, Sarah Jessica Parker and Kathy Najimy.

“It was her timing and her performances that determined what the scenes were going to turn out to be,” he said. “These women knew better. They knew, follow her, just go with her.”

That didn’t mean the younger actors weren’t learning from the stars playing the witches. For Katz, their example extended beyond the performances audiences eventually saw.

“Their work ethic and their discipline, more than anything, I think also helped inspire me to become who I am today,” he said.

Birch remembered how completely the actresses committed themselves to their characters, including the physical preparation, vocal rehearsals and breath work that went into bringing the sisters to life.

The resurrection of the witches

For Shaw, who played Allison, some of the movie’s magic required very little imagination. Her favorite scene was the resurrection of the witches, when the set itself became part of the performance.

“The floorboards are moving, and the light bulbs are popping, and the wind was blowing, and it was just such an immersive experience,” she recalled. “You didn’t have to act at all.”

Not every memorable moment required an elaborate effect. Ortega recalled letting Bagby and Jelinek play around for the sequence that finds their characters still trapped in cages at the end of the movie.

“That whole sequence with the two of you at the end of the movie, you guys improvised,” he said.

“We didn’t even know that it was going to be in the movie, and we just kept rolling the camera,” Ortega added.

Thirty-three years later, even those final moments remain part of a film that fans know well enough to revisit every Halloween. For its director, the reunion offered a chance to thank the people who helped give it that staying power.

“I’m so grateful for what you brought to this project, because what you brought to this project is what’s kept it alive for 33 years,” Ortega told the cast.

He also remembered an early review questioning exactly whom he intended the movie to entertain.

“Was it for kids? Was it for families? Was it for LGBTQ+?” Ortega recalled. “And I wrote the reviewer back, and I said, ‘I made the movie for all of those people.’”

Judging by the crowd at 90s Con, plenty of those people have made room for it in their Halloween plans ever since.