THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA 2: STILL DRESSED RUNWAY READY

Maruné Nel

@muisnel14

 

A Sequel…? On the first of May…? Groundbreaking.

The all-time favourite and cinematic classic, The Devil Wears Prada, finally debuted the long-awaited sequel, The Devil Wears Prada 2, live in theatres on 1 May 2026. The sequel starred most everyone from the original casting in their roles, including the iconic Meryl Streep, Anne Hathaway, Emily Blunt and Stanley Tucci. 

 

All four original and iconic cast members on the red carpet (Source: Forbes).

 

The film followed a similar storyline where Miranda Priestly navigates a major reputation disaster and gets reintroduced to Andy Sachs, the once wide-eyed assistant trying to survive Miranda’s impossible demands. She gets hired as the features editor after being fired from her previous job after winning an award for investigative journalism. Andy miraculously gets a call from Miranda’s boss and is tasked with helping boost the magazine’s credibility and revamp its content amid the scandal, the decline of traditional print media and a management restructure.

 

In other words, the woman who once ruled Runway magazine with an iron fist and a barely audible whisper now had to face the one thing more terrifying than not having hard copies: becoming irrelevant.

 

The sequel, according to a Screen Daily article, generated a whopping $234 million in revenue with its opening weekend, suggesting that audiences were very much ready to return to the world of Runway. Directed once again by David Frankel and written by Aline Brosh McKenna, the same team behind the 2006 original, this number should be no surprise.

 

Meryl Streep and Anne Hathaway in the teaser trailer (Source: Vogue Spain, Pinterest).

 

Meryl Streep, speaking on the Hits Radio Breakfast Show alongside Anne Hathaway and Emily Blunt during the press tour, weighed in on the broader state of modern filmmaking in a way that reflects the film’s own ambitions. “I think we tend to ‘Marvel-ise’ the movies now. We have the villains and we have the good guys. It’s so boring,” she said. “What’s really interesting about life is that some of the heroes are flawed and some of the villains are human, interesting and have their own strengths.” This sentiment maps directly to how Miranda Priestly is handled in the sequel, neither fully redeemed nor fully villainous but somehow more uncomfortable and more honest than the other.

 

The film’s central tension, between Miranda’s resistance to change and the media landscape that has moved on without her, gives the story a grounding that the sequel needed to be able to compare to the original in its own unique existence. The decline of print is not treated as a subplot issue but taken to heart alongside everything else as the actual pressure driving every major decision and conflict in the film.

 

Blunt’s character, Emily Charlton, now a high-powered executive controlling the advertising dollars Miranda desperately needs, provides a dynamic that the first film only hinted at. Stanley Tucci’s character, Nigel, remains the film’s emotional grounding, as he was in the original, whilst also having a few remarkable breakthrough moments of his own. Justin Theroux and Kenneth Branagh, both new to the franchise, bring additional weight to the corporate and personal pressures closing in on Miranda.

 

Blunt and Hathaway as Emily and Andy together in the film (Source: Rotten Tomatoes). 

 

For audiences who grew up with the original, the response has been largely warm. Bernice-Marie Steenhuisen, a full-time student at the North-West University (NWU) Potchefstroom Campus, said, “It was, as expected, an amazing movie with a quality to it rarely seen in cinema these past few years. However, it just doesn’t compare to the magic of the first movie.” It is a sentiment echoed across social media and early reviews, where the consensus appears to be that the sequel is accomplished and worthwhile in its own merit, yet not quite recapturing the sharpness of what made the original a cultural landmark.

 

Not everyone has made it to the cinema yet, but Streep’s name alone appears to be enough to guarantee a ticket. Leya Bothma, also a student at the NWU, has not yet seen the film but says she will. “I would watch anything with Meryl Streep. She is the film equivalent of King Midas,” she said. “I do, however, feel a second film is unnecessary, especially this long after the original. It makes it feel like a quick money grab rather than a film made from love for the story.” A sentiment that captures something the box office numbers alone cannot answer – was the sequel made because it needed to exist or simply because it could?

 

Whether that gap is a function of nostalgia, the impossibility of recreating the cultural moment of 2006, or something inherent in the story itself is a debate audiences are still actively having. What is not up for debate is that the film is a seriously amazing, well-crafted piece of cinema that might just start a new trend in filmmaking.

 

Edited by Isabel Burgers