Hocus Pocus (soundtrack)

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Hocus Pocus: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack is the music score for the 1993 Disney Halloween comedy Hocus Pocus. The score was composed and conducted by John Debney and performed by the Hollywood Studio Symphony.

The soundtrack was officially released on October 1, 2013, by Intrada Records, more than twenty years after the film came out. The release includes the complete film score along with bonus material.

Before the commercial release, a promotional CD with 19 tracks circulated in 1993. It was never released to the public and has since become a rare collector’s item. Because the promo ran about 43 minutes and cut much of the prologue, many bootleg versions of the score appeared online with extra music and alternate takes that aren’t on the official edition.

James Horner was originally set to score the film, but he became unavailable, giving Debney only about two weeks to complete scoring for the 96-minute movie. Horner had written a two-minute Sarah-themed cue for the film, which appears on the Intrada edition as “Sarah’s Theme.”

The song “Almost Unreal” by Roxette was written for the film, and its lyric includes the line “I love when you do that hocus pocus to me.” In the final production, the producers briefly replaced it with En Vogue, but that version was not used. “Almost Unreal” later appeared in the Super Mario Bros. film released around the same time.

All tracks are written by John Debney, except track 10 (Mozart) and track 21, which features music by James Horner with lyrics by Brock Walsh. Track 21 is performed by Sarah Jessica Parker.

Album length: 74 minutes and 25 seconds.