When news broke last May that cult teen horror The Craft was getting a modern day reboot, the world was sceptical. What was the point? Why mess with a near-perfect cult masterpiece? Was nothing sacred anymore? 

Thankfully, any doubters out there can now rest easy. According to a major new update from producer Doug Wick, the upcoming remake will actually be a sequel – and it will be set 20 years after the original 1996 classic.

Wick revealed the news in an interview published on the film’s 20th anniversary earlier this week. “There will be callbacks to the original movie,” he told HitFlix.  “You will see there is a connection between what happened in the days of The Craft, and how these young women come across this magic many years later.” 

There’s no word yet on whether the film’s original witches – played by Neve Campbell, Fairuza Balk, Rachel True and Robin Tunney – will be returning. In fact, at this stage, one of the only names officially attached is emerging filmmaker Leigh Janiak; who will be both directing and writing the project.

“Here are some young women who once again discover the power of magic, and we explore their emotional lives, their wants, their fears, their longings, as they become empowered,” Wick continued. “So you know, the same way you use a war movie to explore the psyche of men, you get to create a heightened world to explore the psyche of these women. And so that seemed like an opportunity that was ripe and a way to make a movie that would be very much about now. And of course, part of that was just finding a talent that felt like enough of a real talent that you’d really be interested in her interpretation of this kind of story now, and of course Leigh is exactly that.”

Read the full interview on Hitflix here.