“The Devil Wears Prada 2”: Money Grab or Modern Take?

If you were to look up new movies coming out in 2026, you would be flooded with endless amounts of sequels: Disney’s Frozen 3, Shrek 5, Toy Story 5, etc. “The Devil Wears Prada,” which originally came out in 2006, was simply iconic for its time–a true cult classic that will forever be rewatched. Rewatching a film a million times, all to keep soaking in what you loved about the movie, is sacred. But no, movies need to have a continuation of a new reheated story that occasionally, will offer nothing the original plotline and overall essence of the film little to no justice. 

The original production of “The Devil Wears Prada” stars Anne Hathaway as Andy Sachs, a post-grad journalist who gets hired as an assistant at a high-end magazine, Runway, and Meryl Streep as Miranda Priestly, her picky “evil’ fashion boss. The film is the pure definition of cheesy, but it emphasizes how unrealistic it is; in 2006, this is camp, exciting, and makes audiences feel like they want to start their own fashion business out of their bedroom. But in 2026, a second movie that feels like a microwaved leftover sequel turned money grab for the film industry.  

The second movie starts with Andy, now a reporter for the prestigious New York Vanguard, at a journalism awards ceremony, winning an award, when she receives a text that she and her colleagues have been fired. In response, Andy presents an acceptance speech that completely calls out the paper and the journalism industry. Quickly after this notion, a video of her acceptance speech gone wrong goes viral on social media. The CEO of the media conglomerate Elias-Clark Publications, Irv Ravitz, played by Tibor Feldman, reaches out to Andy, offering her a position back at Runway. 

With Andy finding herself back in the same job she had 20 years ago, but now, the Features Editor, a much more esteemed and sought-after position that was simply handed off to her. Audiences can tell right off the bat that this movie is creating an additional storyline out of thin air, and that there wasn’t necessarily a need for Andy specifically to come back to Runway to revamp it. Despite this, Andy arrives at Miranda’s office for her first day, and Miranda doesn’t remember who she is, as she has no idea that she is taking over the Features department.

This lack of recognition of Andy feels as though it makes sense for Miranda’s character if she’s truly based on Vogue Magazine’s Anna Wintour, who is said to never remember her assistants because of how fast she flits through them. But for Miranda, who said in the previous film that she sees herself in Andy, it’s not quite clicking how forgettable Andy now is to her.

Throughout Andy’s new job at Runway, she consistently makes comments on how Miranda has “changed”; she cares less, she’s forgetful, and overall, she doesn’t appeal to the fashion world as much as she once did. Magazines are considered old in our day and age; everything is digital and can be accessed across the internet, which is obviously not the way it was in Miranda’s prime, now falling behind the modern world. Something that the film does accurately represent about our nuanced world of Journalism and modern media is the lack of job opportunities, as the career itself has been digitized, and often old-school magazines had the life sucked out of them by major CEO’s. 

As the film progresses, audiences are fed this common theme of a woman needing a man on her side, just as we were in the first movie, with Andy’s boyfriend, Nate, played by Adrian Grenier. In the first movie, Nate was already a character that did show how much change was truly occurring in Andy’s mindset and personal life as she worked for Miranda, but Nate himself did absolutely nothing to add substance to the film. Although Andy did break up with Nate at the end of the film, we never got to feel connected to his character, as he was simply holding her back; this is exactly what the second movie does when adding in Peter, played by Patrick Brammel, a divorced contractor who helps Andy secure a new apartment. 

Adding a boring, meaningless love interest in Andy’s life adds absolutely nothing to the plotline of the film. At Andy’s core, she’s never minded being single–she’s an independent career-oriented woman who has never needed a man, to which she even mentioned to her ex-coworker at Runway, Emily Charlton, played by Emily Blunt. The couple, Andy and Peter, get into fights within the movie that add zero substance to the film or either of their characters; it simply shows how Andy truly doesn’t need a love interest. 

While Andy seamlessly renews her career at Runway, she builds a new name for the brand–one that takes accountability when it is discovered to have worked with sweatshops, and gets interviews with A-list celebrities. Andy continues to prove herself to Miranda, constantly wagging her tail in an attempt to receive a gold star from her, which Miranda rarely gives to her. Andy’s whiny only-child energy from the first movie continues to be relevant and protruding into this film as she works hard only to please Miranda. 

The film itself is nothing special, as it holds the same energy as any sequel does: unneeded and lacking in adding true plot development. The only redeeming factor for the quite dull film is its relatability to the arts and culture fields around us today, as Miranda struggles to keep Runway afloat without being “in style” or as popular as other digital magazines that keep younger audiences.