Kimberly J. Brown ready to board the next bus to Halloweentown.
“I’m totally down for anything. The fans certainly ask me every day for another one,” the former Disney star, 39, exclusively told Us Weekly about her interest in doing a new Halloweentown movie while attending 90s Con in Daytona Beach, Florida on Saturday, September 14. “The cast is totally all down and it’s up to Disney at this point.”
Brown starred in the first three Halloweentown movies as Marnie Piper, a teen who discovers her family is a powerful group of witches who hail from the spooky town. The Disney Channel Original Movie franchise, which premiered in 1998, also featured Judith Hoag, Joey Zimmerman, Emily Roeske and the late Debbie Reynolds. (Reynolds died in December 2016 shortly after the death of her daughter Carrie Fisher.)
While Reynolds would not be able to reprise her role as the beloved Aggie Cromwell, Brown believes that the fans would “love” to see what Marnie and her family have been up to for the past two decades. Plus, she’s got some ideas for how to bring the story forward for the next generation.
“I think Marnie could be running for mayor or be mayor of Halloweentown,” she said. “Like, she was always so progressive in her ideas for Halloween time and everything. I think she would be in some kind of position like that, you know, trying to still bring about new ideas and things like that.”
Halloweentown was a massive success for Disney at the time, spawning four follow-up films. The franchise has remained relevant in today’s pop culture zeitgeist as it’s become a must-watch film during spooky season. Brown called the movie’s staying power the “biggest honor,” seeing as how the cast initially thought it was only going to be one standalone flick.
“When we filmed the first Halloweentown, we only thought we were doing one movie. And the fans and everybody have loved and embraced it so much over the years that we got to do more movies,” she reflected. “And we are just so honored we were here all these years later that people who still come up to me, literally everybody on the street. And that the movies become a part of their Halloween traditions and everything.”
While Brown ultimately did not return for the fourth movie — with Sara Paxton being recast as her character — she still keeps in touch with Hoag, who played her mom, and her on-screen siblings, Roeske and Zimmerman.
“[Judith] and I have always been pretty tight.” Brown told Us, “Like, Emily and Jay Paul [who] played my siblings. We keep in touch. I don’t see them as often, but social media has been great for that over the years to kind of help us all keep in touch. We’re like a little core family, so we always love seeing each other again.”
With reporting by Kat Pettibone