Anne Hathaway drove the first prada reactions to The Devil Wears Prada 2 after press screenings began circulating online ahead of the film’s May 1 worldwide release. The sequel arrives 20 years after the 2006 original, and those early responses are already shaping the first read on how the franchise lands in 2026.
April 20 at Lincoln Center
The film’s rollout picked up on April 20, when it had its world premiere at Lincoln Center in New York City, with Hathaway in attendance. The premiere was live-streamed on Disney+ and Hulu, which widened the audience far beyond the room and turned the event into a real-time marketing platform.
By April 22, the European premiere had moved to London, while additional events followed in Tokyo, Seoul, Shanghai and Milan. That sequence gave the sequel a global press tour before a single ticket went on sale, an aggressive launch pattern for a title built on a 2006 property that made $327 million at the global box office.
Miranda, Andy and Runway
Meryl Streep returns as Miranda Priestly, with Hathaway back as Andy Sachs, Emily Blunt returning as Emily Charlton, and Stanley Tucci back as Miranda’s fashion director and Andy’s mentor. David Frankel returns to direct, and Aline Brosh McKenna returns as screenwriter, keeping the key creative chain from the original film in place for a sequel focused on Miranda and Andy trying to bring Runway Magazine back to relevance in the digital media age.
That setup adds a complication the original film never had to solve: the sequel is not just selling nostalgia, it is asking whether a magazine-world power structure can still play as drama when the industry has already moved on. Emily Charlton now works at a luxury fashion house and becomes someone Miranda and Andy must seek help from, which gives the sequel a different leverage point than the first film’s employer-employee dynamic.
New names around Runway
The cast also expands with Simone Ashley, Lucy Liu, Patrick Brammall, Caleb Hearon, Helen J. Shen, Pauline Chalamet, B. J. Novak, Conrad Ricamora and Rachel Bloom, while Lady Gaga, Ciara, Donatella Versace, Calum Harper and Ashley Graham make cameos. That list is doing the commercial work here: it broadens the sequel’s audience lanes without changing the fact that Hathaway, Streep, Blunt and Tucci remain the story’s core names.
Hathaway’s April 20 appearance at the New York premiere added its own signal. She wore a strapless Louis Vuitton dress with Bulgari jewelry, styled by Erin Walsh, and the look included a tea-length frock with a corseted silhouette, a voluminous skirt, open-toe platforms, pink gold Bulgari jewels, diamond-and-rubellite earrings and a Serpenti bracelet with mother-of-pearl elements. The following Friday, she was photographed in New York City with a sheer dress, sneakers and a black Birkin 25 with gold hardware and a horse-shaped lambskin bag charm, a model similar to versions that retail for around $30,000 on the resale market.
For a sequel that already has press-screening reactions moving online, the practical read is simple: the studio has used its April premiere circuit to pull attention forward, and May 1 is now the test of whether that attention translates beyond fashion chatter and returning-cast recognition into an actual opening for the franchise.
