Buried in the news that Disney has delayed the release dates for both Avengers: Doomsday and Avengers: Secret Wars from their planned first weekend of May releases to December 2026 and 2027, respectively, was the tidbit that The Devil Wears Prada 2 has been tasked with kicking off next year’s summer movie season. Initially released in June 2006, The Devil Wears Prada was a box office and critical hit. It was a career-defining movie for stars like Anne Hathaway, Emily Blunt, and Stanley Tucci, and also redefined Meryl Streep‘s career. Disney and 20th Century Pictures are now counting on the movie’s forthcoming sequel to kick off Summer 2026 instead of a Marvel movie.
Deadline reports that The Devil Wears Prada 2 will open in theaters on May 1, 2026. This was the original release date that Disney had planned for Avengers: Doomsday prior to delaying the film to December 18, 2026. While Meryl Streep and Emily Blunt were reported to be returning for the sequel, no official news has been made.
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Curious to know why they made the switch? Keep reading to find out.
Why ‘The Devil Wears Prada 2’ Kicks Off The Summer Movie Season
Since the release of Spider-Man in 2002, a movie based on a Marvel Comic has typically kicked off the summer movie season with the first weekend of May for decades now. Ever since Spider-Man 3 hit theaters in 2007, the first weekend of May every year has featured a Marvel release — until Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame were bumped up to the last week of April. The COVID-19 pandemic kept Marvel out of the 2020 and 2021 first weekends of May, while the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes forced Marvel Studios to drop their planned May 3, 2024, release date, which The Fall Guy took. However, The Fall Guy failed to capture the Marvel movie excitement that kicks off the summer movie season and had a disappointing opening weekend (but later found success on streaming).
The Devil Wears Prada 2 might seem like an odd fit on the surface to take a highly coveted start of summer release date, but it does have a few key factors working in its favor. One is that it is a legacy sequel to a popular film that will be celebrating its twentieth anniversary when the sequel opens, meaning it can cash in on audience nostalgia. The other is that it will open the week before Mother’s Day, giving The Devil Wears Prada 2 a solid two weeks to attract audiences.
However, The Devil Wears Prada 2 now opens two weeks before Verity, an adaptation of the Colleen Hoover book that happens to star the original The Devil Wears Prada lead, Anne Hathaway. There is no word on if Hathaway will reprise her role as Annie in The Devil Wears Prada 2 (which she said was never going to happen), but with the film likely being fast-tracked into production, it’s unclear if she’d be able to fit both films into her schedule. If she could, that would be great, but if not, it will no doubt feel weird to see Anne Hathaway competing against the sequel to one of her career-defining films at the box office.
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