The Devil Wears Prada 2 Drives Box Office to $77 Million Opening
The Devil Wears Prada 2 opened to $77 million at the box office in North America and $233.6 million worldwide, giving Disney’s 20th Century Studios one of the year’s biggest launches. The sequel landed as the fourth-best opening of the year and did it with a dramedy, not the usual effects-heavy tentpole.
Frankel, Hathaway, Streep
David Frankel said the sequel’s budget mostly went to the cast, and the opening weekend gives that spending a blunt return. Anne Hathaway, Meryl Streep, Emily Blunt and Stanley Tucci all returned to their original roles, with Aline Brosh McKenna back as screenwriter and Frankel back in the director’s chair.
The first The Devil Wears Prada opened to $27.5 million domestically in 2006 and finished with $326 million worldwide. This sequel’s $77 million North American debut is more than double that original opening, while the $156.6 million international launch pushed the global total well past the earlier film’s start.
$100 Million Sequel Budget
The film was produced for roughly $100 million before worldwide marketing costs, a spend that puts pressure on the eventual theatrical run. David A. Gross summed up the result this way: “Very few dramedies do this kind of business once, let alone a second time that’s bigger.” He added, “Audiences, mostly female, can’t get enough.”
Audience response helped too. Exit polls gave the sequel an A- CinemaScore, while reviews were mixed, a split that suggests the movie reached moviegoers more strongly than critics. That kind of opening narrows the gap between specialty-crowd appeal and full commercial scale.
Runway Returns
The sequel picks up two decades later with Andy Sachs returning to Runway magazine as a features editor, a setup that gives the franchise a fresh workplace hook without changing its core cast. For viewers who remember the original’s quote-heavy run, the business case is now plain: a 20-year-old title can still draw blockbuster-level numbers when the studio keeps the same creative framework in place.
Second place went to Michael with $54 million in its second weekend, while The Super Mario Galaxy Movie earned $12.1 million in its fourth weekend and Project Hail Mary took in $8.5 million in its seventh. The opening puts The Devil Wears Prada 2 ahead of those holdovers and makes its next theatrical stretch a test of whether a strong debut can hold after the first rush of demand.
