Halloweentown: all 4 movies, the Marnie recast and the real town

Disney Channel’s Halloweentown premiered on Oct. 17, 1998, and grew into four movies. Here’s how each one came together, why Marnie got recast and where the real Halloweentown is.

If you were a kid in October 1998, you might remember the first time Marnie Piper hopped on a bus to Halloweentown.

Disney Channel’s Halloweentown premiered on Saturday, Oct. 17, 1998. Debbie Reynolds played a grandma who just happens to be a witch, and Kimberly J. Brown played the 13-year-old granddaughter who finds out she’s one, too.

It turned into four movies over eight years. Grandma Aggie’s line “Being normal is vastly overrated” pretty much became its motto.

Nearly 28 years later, a small town in Oregon still throws a six-week party for it. Here’s the story of all four movies, from the first bus ride to the recast nobody saw coming.

What is Halloweentown about?

Aggie Cromwell (Reynolds) leaves Halloweentown, where witches, ghosts and goblins live all year, because something evil is threatening to take it over. She needs help from her daughter, Gwen, and her grandkids, according to D23, Disney’s official fan club.

There’s a catch. Gwen (Judith Hoag) won’t even let her kids celebrate Halloween, even though she grew up in Halloweentown herself.

So Marnie (Brown), her younger brother Dylan (Joey Zimmerman, who now goes by J. Paul Zimmerman) and their little sister Sophie (Emily Roeske) sneak onto Aggie’s bus and end up in Halloweentown.

Duwayne Dunham directed. Robin Thomas played the villain, Kalabar, and Phillip Van Dyke played Luke.

“It was the fourth ever original movie that Disney Channel had ever done,” Brown told Refinery29 in 2016. Mental Floss lists the three before it as “Under Wraps,” “You Lucky Dog” and “Brink!” It was also the network’s second Halloween movie, after “Under Wraps” in 1997, The Daily Beast noted.

The idea didn’t start at Disney, though. NBC bought it first, as part of a six-movie deal, executive producer Sheri Singer told E! News in 2017, according to The Daily Beast.

Her husband and producing partner, Steve White, got the idea from his daughter, who asked him “where do all the creatures from Halloween go the rest of the year when it’s not October 31?”

The script was “big, because it was written as a feature,” Dunham told Refinery29. So they trimmed it down to a movie they could afford to make.

Disney Channel posted the kids’ first trip into town on YouTube:

Who played Grandma Aggie in Halloweentown?

Debbie Reynolds, the star of “Singin’ in the Rain.” She played Aggie in all four movies, according to D23, though she only shows up briefly in the last one.

She had a go-to line for meeting people on set.

“When she showed up on set the first day, she said ‘Hello, hello! I’m Princess Leia’s mother,’” Hoag told Refinery29. Reynolds’ daughter was Carrie Fisher, Princess Leia herself.

Hoag also remembered Reynolds joking about a Las Vegas hotel she owned that was struggling at the time: “My life is one series of fascinating disasters after another.”

Dunham said Reynolds “comes from the school of one take.” She showed up prepared and expected to get it right the first time.

Brown shared more stories this month on Disney’s Throwbacks podcast. She said Reynolds told her she borrowed a little of Aggie from Agnes Moorehead, who played Endora on “Bewitched.” Reynolds also used to hand out Halloween candy in her Aggie cloak to surprise fans, Brown said, and Brown did the same thing in her Marnie costume for a few years.

Reynolds died on Dec. 28, 2016, at 84, one day after Fisher, CBS News reported. The next October, Brown, Zimmerman and Hoag reunited in St. Helens, Oregon, for a tribute to her at the town’s Halloweentown festival, according to ET and Portland Monthly.

Where was Halloweentown filmed?

St. Helens, Oregon, a river town about 30 miles northwest of Portland, according to Portland Monthly.

The crew took over the town square. Dunham told Refinery29 it was “like shooting on the back lot.”

It didn’t feel much like October, though. Brown said on the podcast they shot it in the middle of summer, so it was very warm, even with monsters walking around town.

The famous broom ride with Reynolds was the last day of filming, and it was shot in a studio in front of a blue screen, Brown told Refinery29. On the podcast, she said the two of them sat on a big, tall stool with the broom attached for most of the afternoon while the crew rocked it side to side. Reynolds told stories and made sure Brown’s dad got plenty of pictures.

St. Helens never let go of the movie. Locals started a Halloween festival after filming wrapped, Portland Monthly reported.

It nearly faded out by 2007, then picked back up after the city had the movie’s giant jack-o’-lantern rebuilt in 2010. In 2012, the city set aside $5,000 in tourism money to buy movie props, including the taxicab.

This year’s Spirit of Halloweentown runs Saturdays and Sundays through Nov. 1 in downtown St. Helens, from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m., according to the festival’s organizers. Getting into the plaza is free, and an Access Pass covers the paid attractions. There’s a pumpkin lighting each festival evening and a trolley tour of filming locations.

Zimmerman, Roeske and Van Dyke are scheduled to appear Oct. 17 and 18, which happens to be the movie’s 28th anniversary weekend. Hoag is scheduled for Oct. 24 and 25.

The festival nearly took a hit this year. In September, St. Helens had to cover a $350,000 gap in its events budget, so the City Council moved $250,000 from its contingency fund and approved a $100,000 loan from another city fund, KPTV reported. One downtown shop owner told the station the festival brings in about 80% of her gift shop’s money for the year.

What happens in Halloweentown II: Kalabar’s Revenge?

The sequel premiered on Oct. 12, 2001, according to D23.

This time the villain is Kal (Daniel Kountz), the son of Kalabar. He steals Aggie’s spell book, Halloweentown goes gray and its creatures start turning into plain, colorless humans. His bigger plan is to turn everyone in the mortal world into whatever costume they’re wearing at midnight on Halloween, D23 says.

Mary Lambert directed it. She also directed the 1989 horror movie “Pet Sematary” and Madonna’s “Like a Virgin” and “Material Girl” videos, according to the Encyclopedia of Arkansas.

Kountz had about 15 minutes to come up with the spell that opens the portal, Mental Floss reported, so he based it on a German song he learned in his high school choir.

The best twist happened off screen. Brown and Kountz played enemies, but they weren’t dating during filming and didn’t talk for years afterward, ET reported. They reconnected when Brown asked him to be in videos for her YouTube channel, went public as a couple in 2018 and announced their engagement in June 2022.

They’re married now, Brown said on the podcast. She also said she’s been surprised by how many fans rooted for Marnie and Kal to get together.

Disney Channel’s clip of Marnie and Aggie finding a gray, colorless Halloweentown:

What is Halloweentown High about?

The third movie premiered on Oct. 8, 2004, and Mark A.Z. Dippe directed it, according to D23.

Marnie sets up an exchange program that brings Halloweentown students to her human high school. Then she bets her family’s magic that nothing will go wrong, which goes about how you’d expect. Soon she has to protect the students from the Knights of the Iron Dagger, a group out to wipe out magical creatures.

Finn Wittrock, years before “American Horror Story,” played Cody. Clifton Davis played the principal.

The school scenes were shot at Juan Diego Catholic High School in Draper, Utah, Mental Floss reported. That campus also played the school in another Disney Channel movie, “The Luck of the Irish” (2001).

The crew made custom gym shirts and jackets for the movie’s made-up school, Zimmerman said on the podcast. He kept some and wore them around for a while afterward.

Why was Marnie recast in Return to Halloweentown?

Even Brown says she doesn’t know.

The fourth movie, “Return to Halloweentown,” premiered on Oct. 20, 2006, with Sara Paxton as Marnie, according to D23. Marnie and Dylan enroll at Witch University as Halloweentown gets ready for its 1,000th anniversary.

Lucas Grabeel, who played Ryan in “High School Musical” that same year, plays Ethan. Hoag, Zimmerman and Reynolds are in all four movies, but Roeske’s Sophie doesn’t appear in this one, Mental Floss noted.

Brown talked about it in a 2018 video Q&A, TheWrap reported. “The answer to that is I’m not really sure,” she said. “I was available and ready to do it,” she added, but “Disney decided to go in a different direction and recast the role.”

Paxton has taken heat for it ever since. In a 2021 interview, she said she gets “a lot of flack online for this movie” every Halloween, according to TheWrap.

She also said she’s met Brown a few times: “There’s no beef! I’m a fan!”

Disney hasn’t announced a fifth movie. On the podcast, Brown pitched a grown-up Marnie who either teaches young witches or runs for mayor of Halloweentown. Zimmerman figures Dylan would be taking care of the library.

Where can you watch the Halloweentown movies?

All four are streaming on Disney+.

Disney also brought two of the stars back this month. On Oct. 1, Disney released a Halloweentown episode of the Disney+ Hulu Throwbacks Podcast and posted the video on YouTube. Hosts Sherry Cola and Cierra Ramirez talk with Brown and Zimmerman for about 40 minutes.

Brown said she still has Marnie’s cloak and hat from the second movie, one of the little brooms Marnie carried, the bat that worked for Kalabar and a book she had the cast and crew sign like a yearbook.

What are some fun facts about Halloweentown?

Benny took a team. It took a crew of puppeteers with remote controls to run the skeleton cab driver, the stars said on the podcast, and Brown remembers controls that could move something as small as an eyebrow. Dunham named Benny as one of the movie’s funny characters, along with a two-headed coffee drinker.

April O’Neil played Gwen. Hoag played April in the 1990 “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” movie. At her Halloweentown audition, a Disney Channel executive told her his family loved the Turtles, she told Refinery29, so she signed an autograph for his son.

The director had Disney and Twin Peaks on his resume. Before Halloweentown, Dunham directed episodes of “Twin Peaks” and Disney’s “Homeward Bound,” Refinery29 noted.

There’s a chibi version. Disney Channel Animation retold the movie as a 70-second cartoon in its Chibi Tiny Tales series in October 2020. It has more than 1.1 million views on YouTube.

You can wear the pumpkin. A Halloweentown T-shirt with a big jack-o’-lantern under the movie’s logo is part of Disney Store’s new Bobby Kim “Baddies” collection, which goes on sale at DisneyStore.com on Oct. 15 at 6 p.m. Pacific, Laughing Place reported.

Article compiled with the help of the Pirates & Princesses newsroom.

Pirates and Princesses is your destination for Disney news, theme park updates, and the pop culture you love. From Disney cruises and travel tips to Disney fashion, food, collectibles, and movie news, PNP covers it all. Visit us at piratesandprincesses.net for daily coverage. Follow PNP on Facebook and Instagram, and listen to the Pirates & Princesses podcast on Apple Podcasts and YouTube.

Hat Tips:

• D23 Disney A to Z: Halloweentown, Halloweentown II: Kalabar’s Revenge, Halloweentown High, Return to Halloweentown and Debbie Reynolds entries

• Hunter Harris, Refinery29, Oct. 12, 2016: Halloweentown oral history with Duwayne Dunham, Judith Hoag and Kimberly J. Brown

• Disney+ Hulu Throwbacks Podcast, Oct. 1, 2026: Halloweentown episode with Kimberly J. Brown and J. Paul Zimmerman, via Disney+ on YouTube

• Andi Ortiz, TheWrap, Oct. 6, 2022: why Marnie was recast

• Kerry Wolfe, Mental Floss, Oct. 14, 2020: Halloweentown facts, filming locations and sequel casts

• Allison McClain Merrill, The Daily Beast, Oct. 17, 2023: Halloweentown’s NBC origin

• ET, Aug. 17, 2017, and June 30, 2022: the cast’s tribute to Debbie Reynolds, and Brown and Kountz’s engagement

• CBS News, Dec. 28, 2016: Debbie Reynolds’ death

• Alli Weseman, Portland Monthly, Oct. 22, 2019: St. Helens and the history of its Halloweentown festival

• Treadway Events & Entertainment via Business Wire, Sept. 23, 2026: Spirit of Halloweentown 2026 dates and cast appearances

• Vince Ybarra, KPTV, Sept. 10, 2026: St. Helens’ event budget

• Encyclopedia of Arkansas: Mary Lambert

• Disney Channel and Disney Channel Animation on YouTube: Halloweentown clips and Chibi Tiny Tales

• Laughing Place: Disney | Bobby Kim “Baddies” collection

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