A sequel? Of a beloved early 2000s classic? Groundbreaking.
No, seriously – The Devil Wears Prada 2 really is groundbreaking, with Variety reporting that the sequel has made nearly $550 million at the box office, far exceeding the amount made by the original, and making it the fifth-highest-grossing movie of 2026 thus far.
How did this happen? For decades, the chick-flick sequel was regarded as poorly-made, poorly-marketed slop destined for the bottom of the DVD bin at a charity shop. Seriously, who remembers Mean Girls 2? Or Legally Blonde 2: Red, White & Blonde? Or Miss Congeniality 2: Armed and Dangerous?
Indeed, Hollywood sequels are historically the domain of two audience demographics: families and men. Think of the endless conveyor-belt of Disney animated remakes, sequels, and prequels; the ever-expanding Marvel and Star Wars universes; the constant barrage of horror franchise movies. You would be forgiven for thinking, as Gina Wurtz laments, that ‘chick flicks have seemingly gone extinct, and there’s no sign they might get a revival anytime soon.’
Enter the Girl. Girl Dinner. Girl Math. Soft girls. Hot girl summer… Dazed even dubbed 2023 the ‘Year of the Girl’. But three years on, and the ‘year’ of the girl has transformed into a broader cultural moment. A ‘Girl Era’, if you will.
It’s not just a trendy term. The Girl (typically referring to women in their twenties and early thirties) has enormous purchasing power. The Financial Times reported in 2025 that recent research“estimates that up to 80 per cent of consumer spending is already influenced by women”, with that number expected to grow. The Girl reads more books than men. The Girl buys more concert tickets than men. The Girl watches more TV than men. The Girl, in other words, is the biggest influencer of pop culture today.
Some industries have been clued into the power of the Girl for a while: see the endless romantasy novels lining the shelves of bookstores, or the steamy dramas filling our TV screens. But Heated Rivalry and ACOTAR and Bridgerton are recent IPs; until this year, media capitalising on chick-flick nostalgia was few and far between. The only notable releases are Mamma Mia: Here We Go Again in 2018 and Bridget Jones: Mad About The Boy in 2025– the latter of which was, in the US, doomed to direct-to-streaming purgatory, indicating that even a year ago, studios were still unconvinced about the commercial potential of the nostalgic Girl market. By all means, major Hollywood studios, move at a glacial pace. You know how that thrills us.
But The Devil Wears Prada 2 indicates a shift in studios’ mentality. Finally – finally – studios are recognising the potential capital in the Girl’s nostalgia for the chick-flick era. Disney pulled out all the stops in the film’s promotion, from cameos by some of fashion’s biggest names to Vogue bringing together Meryl Streep’s Miranda Priestly and Anna Wintour herself for their May 2026 cover story. As the box office stats prove, the effort paid off: in its opening weekend alone, the film made $233m (£171m, A$323m) worldwide “from an overwhelmingly female audience”.
The Devil Wears Prada 2 is just the start: following the film’s success comes Practical Magic 2 in September, and, on the small screen, Legally Blonde prequel series Elle will premiere on Prime this summer. But with these releases on the horizon and more likely to come, we should ask: like any sequel, prequel, or remake, are these chick-flicks anything more than shameless cash-grabs, soullessly rehashing the same iconic quotes and story beats for an easy profit?
When Dazed announced the ‘Year of the Girl’, they conceded that “many ‘girly’ trends are fundamentally capitalistic”. The Girl is, ultimately, defined by what she consumes. And, with the success of The Devil Wears Prada 2, studios have concluded that what the Girl wants to consume is chick-flick nostalgia. For Hollywood, profit always trumps art: as Miranda Priestly herself wryly comments to a rival in The Devil Wears Prada 2, “you’re not a visionary, you’re a vendor.” No longer relegated to the DVD bargain bin, the chick-flick sequel is the hottest IP around. And the Girl is Hollywood’s next big market.