Omri Katz played troublesome teen, Max Dennison in the iconic comedy but retired from acting in 2022 and has since taken up a very different career
Charlotte Owen
10:51, 31 Oct 2025
It’s a movie that’s been beloved by Halloween fans for more than 30 years with its three main characters instantly recognisable – but one star from film favourite Hocus Pocus looks very different after embarking on a completely new career since quitting showbiz.
Omri Katz, now 49, portrayed teenager Max Dennison in the 1993 classic comedy which follows a trio of witches – played by Bette Midler, Kathy Najimy and Sarah Jessica Parker – who were accidentally resurrected on Halloween night.
But now, far away from playing a cocky 90s teen, Katz has reportedly been running a cannabis company called The Mary Danksters since 2022.
This about turn in his career is perhaps no surprise after the star admitted he experimented with drugs around the time Hocus Pocus came out.
Speaking to Entertainment Weekly, Katz said: “That was at an age where I started experimenting with cannabis. Let’s just say, some of those scenes, I was having a good old time.”
In a video uploaded to Instagram recently, Katz looked almost unrecognisable in an interview at Sci-Fi Valley Con where he admitted that he ‘hated’ watching himself on screen and would only watch Hocus Pocus if he was ‘kind of forced to’.
He said the film was ‘not typically one of my go-tos’ at Halloween.
He said: “I got to live it and experience it so I don’t need to watch it.”
The former star quit acting in 2002 after appearing in American prime time soap, Dallas, as John Ross Ewing III – son of the infamous J.R. – from 1983 until 1996 and later in TV shows Freaks and Geeks and General Hospital.
His final credit was a short film titled Journey Into Night, where he played Sean.
However, it’s his turn in the iconic Halloween movie that is still getting the most air time.
In the film, it was Max’s character who unintentionally summoned the Sanderson sisters and must stop the wicked witches from luring the town’s children to their witch house and ‘drink’ their life force away from them.
Such has been the renewed success of Hocus Pocus – following a loss when it originally came out – that a sequel was released on Disney is 2022 and a third instalment is officially in development.