THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA 2 (David Frankel 2026)

[Chris Knipp]

ANNE HATHAWAY, MERYL STREEP, STANLEY TUCCI IN THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA 2

DAVID FRANKEL: THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA 2 (2026)

20-year sequel full of today's "issues" that's looking like a big hit

This is a sequel to a popular film (Hollywood Reporter calls it "a culture-defining hit") and the principals are back, twenty years later. Prada 1 was fun. I saw it with Carol Sheehan, someone who brought such enthusiasm to movie-watching - especially so, as a magazine editor herself (of Country Home), to this one. But Carol is no longer with us. I saw it alone this time, and it's full of today's brutal downsizing of media. Nonetheless I found a morning showing of the new film, in a remote suburban location, surprisingly busy for cineplexes today. It's got some good buzz.

It's got cameos like Ashley Graham, Donatella Versace, Domenico Dolce, Marc Jacobs, Lady Gaga. A Dolce and Gabbana runway show appears, and the movie goes to Milan instead of Paris this time. There are lot of other fashion or media figures who appear as extras in the film: I didn't notice them, but more are listed in a Variety piece.

We who are still around are twenty years older and so are the numerous original cast members who have returned - although, being Hollywood actors, they have ways of still looking great, as we may not. Meryl Streep again is Miranda Priestly, the imperious editor of Runway, a stand-in for Vogue,. Anne Hathaway is Andy Sachs, the then fledgling, now experienced, journalist. Emily Blunt who was Miranda's jealous, mean assistant, Emily, is now a high-powered executive at Dior, navigating a new life in Milan while dating a "daffy billionaire" named Benji Barnes (Justin Theroux). Stanley Tucci is still Nigel, Miranda's still-loyal and arguably overqualified designer. Aline Brosh McKenna, who wrote the screenplay, returned, as did David Frankel to direct. The eponymous novel by Lauren Weisberger remains a basis for the setting and characters. The novel is further in the distance now. But this sequel will easily draw fans of the original. Will they like it, though? Maybe. It has grown up, but so have they.

The first film made the characters more rounded than the novel. When the chilly editor based on Anna Wintour became the novel's Miranda Priestly played by Meryl Streep, she kept the chilliness with an edge of camp but gained nuance (which A.O. Scott wrote she "carries. . . in every pore"), and by the film's end when she is divorced there is human fallibility.

The sequel tries to maintain our awareness of the hardness of the fashion magazine world, but this is not about a young apprentice doing a trial assistant stint. It's about more grown-up stuff, like the survival of print media, the impact of digital technology on luxury, and navigating professional legacy. The owner of the magazine conglomerate Elias-Clarke Irv Ravitz (again Tibor Feldman, back from Prada 1) dies and his son Jay (B.J. Novak) immediately sets out to gut Runway . This is what happens all the time now. Somehow that gets averted.

The film does some fast footwork to manage to bring back Andy and Miranda as almost-pals. Andy has established a serious reputation as a journalist about issues who gets hired on at Runway as a features editor to give the magazine some weight and to repair the magazine's reputation after it was duped into lavishing praise on a sweatshop-using brand. Instead of abandoning Miranda in Paris during Fashion Week, she stays with Miranda as an ally. Now, the fact that magazines as print media are nearly dead is stated in no uncertain terms and the way "little things" like them are swallowed up by young billionaires on smartphones and ready-to-wear is more and more the thing and not haute couture.

Recently through the magic of YouTube I discovered Bliss Foster, who has a channel about fashion there, and has extensively reported on Paris and Milan fashion weeks, and from him, I'd say this: a lot is going on in the world of fashion now at various economic levels. And Prada 2 isn't about any of that. As an uninformed fan of fashion and style, I've welcomed Bliss Foster and practically binge-watched him.

What the new movie is about is some of the stuff that went on and entertained you in Prada 1, minus the coming-of-age - and most of the personal life - aspects, plus new issues of the new economic and media worlds we live in now. The Devil Wears Prada 2 is a massive hit, opening as the top film at the box office for the May 1–3, 2026 weekend. Projections indicate a huge $85 million+ domestic debut and a $175M–$180M+ global opening, greatly outperforming the 2006 original and setting records as a major female-driven summer opener. Go figure. And, perhaps, rejoice. Critically, it's about where the first film was. See Metacritic.

The Devil Wears Prada 2, 119 mins., premiered in NYC Apr. 20, 2026, and London Apr. 22, 2026, and opened theatrically in the US May 1. Metacritic rating: 63% (2006 Prada was 62).