Twenty years is exactly long enough for an entire media industry to die. When David Frankel’s original The Devil Wears Prada hit cinemas in 2006, Vogue was still publishing two-hundred-page issues stuffed with advertising, and Anna Wintour was the unchallenged empress of the fashion world. In May 2026 — just before the sequel opened — Wintour announced her retirement after 37 years at American Vogue, while print magazines worldwide are in free fall.
This is exactly the line The Devil Wears Prada 2 walks. The film opened in cinemas on May 1, 2026, and is still — three weeks later — sitting at the top of the global box office. Built on a $100 million budget (the original made $326 million on $35 million), it debuted with $41.6 million domestically, and has held the US top spot for three consecutive weekends, including a Mother’s Day boost against competition like Project Hail Mary and Mortal Kombat II. Full 2026 box office figures and franchise rankings are tracked at FilmDB.
The real question, though, isn’t the box office — it’s whether revisiting Miranda Priestly twenty years on actually works.
What happens 20 years later
The film opens in 2026. Andy Sachs (Anne Hathaway) has become an established journalist, and she’s about to accept a professional award when her phone buzzes: by text, her publisher has just laid off her entire table of colleagues. This is the death of print journalism with no apology.
Meanwhile, Runway magazine (the Vogue parody Miranda Priestly edits) is in serious trouble: it recently ran a glowing profile of a fast-fashion company called Speed Fash, which turns out to have lied about its sustainability practices and effectively used the magazine as propaganda. Damage control is needed. The magazine’s owner hires Andy as features editor — without telling Miranda.
That sets up the central conflict: Miranda (Meryl Streep) is approaching retirement but isn’t ready to step down. Her opponent is her former assistant, Emily Charlton (Emily Blunt), now a senior executive at Dior, who controls the luxury advertising money that could decide the magazine’s survival. Emily’s new partner is Benji Barnes (Justin Theroux), a tech mogul who could end up owning the entire print-fashion sector.
Kenneth Branagh joins the cast as Miranda’s husband, Stanley Tucci returns as Nigel, and Lady Gaga has a cameo plus a new track on the soundtrack (“Runway,” featuring Doechii).
What works, what doesn’t
The Devil Wears Prada 2‘s biggest strength remains Meryl Streep. Streep doesn’t simply revive Miranda Priestly — she rebuilds her: the icy-tongued captain is now an aristocrat of a dying industry, and her menace is part physiological (don’t let anyone see her get sentimental), part professional (don’t lose the power). Streep plays this with serious dramatic weight, and that’s exactly what gives the character a new dimension. TIME magazine’s review calls the sequel “darker than its predecessor — and that makes it better,” and that holds up primarily because of Streep.
Anne Hathaway is more restrained. Andy Sachs has grown up, but the script doesn’t give her much to do — she’s mostly a re-entry point. Emily Blunt, however, gets the meatier arc: her Emily is now a full-weight antagonist, and Blunt clearly enjoys the transition from assistant to rival power. Stanley Tucci’s Nigel is exactly the dose of nostalgic comfort the audience came for.
The film is visually first-class. Returning cinematographer Florian Ballhaus brings the same glossy, fashion-spread aesthetic that defined the original. The costume design (Molly Rogers) consciously bridges 2000s magazine glamour with 2020s influencer aesthetics. The Milan runway sequences are some of the film’s finest moments.
The problem — and on this most major reviewers (The Hollywood Reporter, NPR, Variety) agree — is the core plot. The film essentially asks Andy and Miranda to band together to save Runway while the industry dies around them. But screenwriter Aline Brosh McKenna can’t decide whether to take this seriously or wave at it nostalgically. NPR’s Bob Mondello puts it precisely: “after 20 years, the fashion industry is still going strong, but journalism is struggling” — and the magazine-rescue story never quite lands. Speed Fash, AI, influencer marketing: they’re all here in the background, but none of them gets the satirical edge they deserve.
The reference point: the original
Part of what made the first Devil Wears Prada a modern classic is that it didn’t try to defend or expose — it just observed. Miranda wasn’t a cartoon villain but a believable middle-management tyrant portrait. Andy wasn’t Cinderella but a 23-year-old realising that compromise can be meaningful, but some prices aren’t worth paying. The 2006 film was about characters, not about an industry’s existential crisis.
The sequel tries to be both — character story and industry critique — and lands neither cleanly. Variety‘s review rightly notes the film had two interesting possible routes — a character study of Miranda Priestly heading into retirement, or a satire of dying print media — but it can’t run both at once.
That said, for a 2026 mainstream Disney comedy, this is still well above average: solid watchability, decent humour, a few hard Streep zingers (she describes a Vogue-style shoot as “starving goats in the parking lot of a methadone clinic in New Jersey”), and a Hathaway-Streep reunion that justifies the ticket alone.
Is it worth watching?
Yes, but keep your expectations measured. The Devil Wears Prada 2 doesn’t catch up to the original — and never will — but it fits comfortably into the “nostalgia-sequel” genre (see Top Gun: Maverick, Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy). If you watched the original ten times on DVD back in the day, the sequel is worth the 119 minutes. If you were never a fan of the first film, skip it.
The one-line verdict: a return in style, if not in substance, and Meryl Streep can still freeze an entire industry with a single glance.