‘How could you re-create perfection?’: Inside Astral Tequila’s microdrama homage to ‘Practical Magic 2’

Forget a five-o’clock cocktail—Astral Tequila and Practical Magic 2 are making midnight margaritas for all.

The beverage brand and witchy movie sequel have teamed up to bring the magic of the Halloweentime classic to a new, younger audience. As official tequila sponsor of Practical Magic 2, which hits theaters September 11, Astral Tequila is hosting an “It’s Midnight Somewhere” tour in several cities across the country, holding watch parties for bartenders, and creating a microdrama social series, all alongside an appearance in the film itself.

It’s a milestone partnership for the relatively new tequila brand, which first debuted in 2022, Brand Director Jenn Rapp told us.

“This is a really opportune time for us to have this big moment in culture where we can truly supercharge the awareness that people have,” Rapp said.

Season of the witch

In the first Practical Magic, the romantic fantasy turned cult classic released in 1998, sisters Sally and Gillian Owens, played by Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman, crawl out of bed to join their aunts for a late evening of rambunctious margaritas and bonding.

That meant that when the Practical Magic 2 opportunity arose from conversations with Warner Bros., Rapp said the film’s cultural power and its natural relationship to tequila made it an obvious fit.

“The answer was pretty much immediately yes, because there really is no more iconic margarita scene in film history than the midnight margarita in Practical Magic,” she said.

The sisterhood element of both the original and upcoming sequel also shaped the storyline and casting for Astral’s accompanying microdrama social campaign, titled “It’s Midnight Somewhere.” Across five minute-long episodes, reality stars and real-life sisters Brooks and Grace Ann Nader navigate mysteriously magical neighbors and a malfunctioning blender while trying to make their own midnight margaritas.

“We wanted to make a microdrama, and we wanted it to be really centered around sisterhood,” director Madelaine Turner told us. “The Nader sisters ended up being just a really perfect choice and perfect fit for the project itself, and…we built the script tailored to their dynamic and their strengths, bringing their very fun sisterhood charm to life.”

Turner has a background in short-form vertical content and narrative storytelling, but she had never made a microdrama before working with Astral via a connection through the agency Merman. Still, she said, she felt the novelty of the genre served this particular project while still allowing her to creatively experiment, which included leaning into the reality TV tropes that felt natural for the Nader sisters.

“Mediums are meant to be molded, and I think the microdrama has endless potential if tapped into from a unique creative perspective,” she said. “I do think we will see more iterations of microdramas as time goes on, and more interesting stories told, with the benefit of a scroll factor built in.”

Double, double toil and trouble

For a brand like Astral looking to grow awareness, Rapp said the appeal of a sequel partnership lies not only in a built-in dedicated audience of the original film but in the younger Gen Z moviegoers who can hopefully be hooked.

“We knew that we needed to be able to broaden it out and extend [Practical Magic] to a new generation of fans who might not be familiar with the movie,” she said. “This social series is exactly how we feel like we’ve been able to do that, because yes, if you’re familiar with the film, you’re gonna love it, and if you are coming on to it for the first time, it really is a story that stands on its own, and you are going to get a really cool introduction to the film.”

But it was also important not to be redundant. Rapp said she thought it was key to focus the microdrama campaign around original story elements, adding that she never really considered re-creating the first film’s iconic scenes.

“How could you re-create perfection?” she asked. “Just re-creating it wouldn’t have really introduced the spirit of it to a new generation. I think we needed to come at it from a slightly different angle.”

Astral isn’t the only brand tapping into the power of sequels to connect with a cross-generational audience. When The Devil Wears Prada 2 premiered earlier this year, brands like Old Navy, Zillow, Diet Coke, and Dior lined up for everything from onscreen placement to cobranded product partnerships, looking for ways to weave brand narratives into another beloved franchise.

As the Practical Magic 2 campaign goes live, Rapp said the Astral team is keeping an eye on view counts and shares to hopefully expose as many people as possible to the brand. With great potential awareness comes great responsibility, though—and Rapp is mindful of Astral’s role in potentially shaping the next phase of the Owens witches’ storylines.

“It really is an opportunity for people to discover this brand in a way that is really fun and within a story that is so loved and so adored. I think it’s a great privilege,” Rapp said. “We didn’t take that responsibility lightly, and we really feel like we’ve only been additive to the story and to continue to elevate and give the spotlight to the midnight margarita.”