The Devil Wears Prada 2 strutted into theaters Thursday with $10 million in preview screenings — and a simultaneous $40.5 million overseas haul in its first two days — signaling one of the biggest female-driven opening weekends in Hollywood history and handing Disney’s 20th Century Studios a blockbuster to launch the summer season.
The film holds the distinction of becoming the first female-led property in modern history to kick off the summer box office, a slot that has almost always belonged to a Marvel superhero title or a Fast & Furious entry. The $10 million preview gross places it just below last summer’s Thunderbolts*, which earned $11.5 million in previews on its way to a $74.3 million domestic opening.
Industry analysts now project Prada 2 will land between $75 million and $100 million domestically for the full weekend, with the upper end of that range driven by the recent precedent set by Lionsgate’s Michael, which was forecast at $70 million and opened to $97.2 million.
Internationally, the sequel posted the highest opening day of 2026 to date in Brazil, Italy, Korea, Australia and more than a dozen other markets, with early territory totals led by Italy at $5.9 million, Brazil at $3.2 million, Germany at $3.1 million, and Mexico at $3 million. Combined domestic and international projections point toward a global debut of $175 million to $190 million for the weekend.
The sequel carries a production budget of $100 million — more than double the original’s $40 million — and is expected to surpass the first film’s entire lifetime domestic gross of $125 million within its opening weeks. Presales in North America reached $20 million before the film opened, a figure that outpaced the early trajectories of both Dune: Part Two and Project Hail Mary.
Anna Wintour, who denied any connection to Streep’s Miranda Priestly character when the original film was released in 2006, has this time fully embraced the association, appearing on the cover of Vogue alongside Streep under the tagline “When Miranda met Anna.”
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Critic Guy Lodge, reviewing the film, wrote that its chief pleasures come from “practiced professionals doing their job and doing it well,” adding that the returning cast’s combined chemistry ensures the sequel “for good long stretches, feels like old times.” The Rotten Tomatoes audience score sits at 88 percent, well above the original film’s 76 percent.
