Nearly two decades after “The Devil Wears Prada” strutted and sashayed its way into theaters, a sequel is officially in the works.
Variety on Monday broke the news that a follow-up to the smash 2006 film, which starred Anne Hathaway and Meryl Streep, is being developed by Disney. A day after Variety’s report, Entertainment Weekly confirmed that both Hathaway and Streep, along with co-stars Emily Blunt and Stanley Tucci, are “in talks” to reprise their roles in the new movie.
Original screenwriter Aline Brosh McKenna is working on the new movie’s screenplay, with director David Frankel also expected to return, according to EW.
Based on Lauren Weisberger’s bestselling 2003 novel, “The Devil Wears Prada” follows aspiring journalist Andy Sachs (played by Hathaway), who lands a job as an assistant to Miranda Priestly (Streep), the ruthlessly demanding editor-in-chief of a high-end fashion magazine.
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It’s widely believed that the story is based on Weisberger’s brief stint at Vogue, where she worked under Anna Wintour, the publication’s legendary editor-in-chief. Wintour, for her part, has pointedly described the movie as “fiction.”
“The Devil Wears Prada” was a critical and commercial smash, raking in a reported $326.7 million at the box office worldwide. Streep won a Golden Globe for her portrayal of Miranda, and the film proved a breakout moment for the London-born Blunt, who was until then best known as a British theater actor.
In February, Blunt, Hathaway and Streep reunited on stage at the 2024 Screen Actors Guild Awards.
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When asked about the prospect of a sequel just two months later, however, Hathaway appeared skeptical.
“We all love each other and if somebody could come up with a way to do it, I think we’d all be crazy not to,” she told the fashion magazine V in April. “But there’s a huge difference in the world now with technology, and one of the things about that particular story is it was about producing a physical object. Now with so much being digital, it would just be very different.”
Though details are scarce, “The Devil Wears Prada 2” appears to be taking some of Hathaway’s concerns, as well as the economic challenges that have rattled the real-life media industry in recent years, into account.
According to Variety, the film finds Miranda grappling with the decline of traditional magazine publishing and at odds with Blunt’s character, Emily Charlton, who is now a high-powered executive in charge of advertising at a luxury company.
The film sequel doesn’t appear to be based on Weisberger’s follow-up novel, “Revenge Wears Prada: The Devil Returns.” Released in 2013, the book sees Andy and Emily launching a wedding magazine called The Plunge, which lands them both back on Miranda’s radar a decade later.
Watch the trailer for 2006’s “The Devil Wears Prada” below: