• Meryl Streep and Martin Short were photographed at an intimate London dinner, sitting side by side and leaning into each other.
• A fan who was seated nearby described their interaction as “full of laughs and tender gestures.”
• The sighting comes just days after a source claimed the couple’s connection had been strained following the death of Short’s daughter Katherine in February.
• Both stars are in London filming Only Murders in the Building Season 6, the show’s first season shot outside the U.S.
• Reps have long denied they’re a couple, but the evidence — and the fans — keep piling up.

Whatever the tabloids were saying about Meryl Streep and Martin Short, a candid photo from a London restaurant this weekend told a very different story.

A fan who stumbled into the same dining room as the pair on Sunday, May 17, posted a photo to X that immediately set the internet on fire. In it, Streep and Short — both 76 — are seated on the same side of the table, shoulders touching, both peering at something on her phone. Streep has her head tilted toward Short’s chest. It’s the kind of picture that doesn’t need a caption.

“Spending a few days in London, choosing a restaurant at random and ending up eating just a few meters from Meryl Streep and her husband,” the fan wrote on X — mistakenly calling Short Streep’s husband (Streep is single following her 2023 separation from Don Gummer, and Short has been a widower since his wife Nancy Dolman passed away in 2010). When someone asked if she’d gone over to say hello or snag a selfie, the fan shut that down immediately.

“No. They were having a great time. Full of laughs and tender gestures,” she wrote in a follow-up post. “No desire to impose myself in the middle of that.”

Honestly? Respect.

A Sighting That Comes at a Significant Moment

The timing of the photo matters. Just days before it surfaced, a source told RadarOnline.com that Short and Streep’s relationship had been under strain in the aftermath of a devastating loss — Short’s daughter Katherine died by suicide in February at age 42. “[Meryl] loves Martin unconditionally, and it’s just devastating to see him so broken,” the insider said. “They have never referred to each other as ‘boyfriend’ and ‘girlfriend’ per se, but they have been incredibly close.” The source added that “the hope is that once things start to calm down, they can find a way to reconnect.”

That London photo suggests the reconnection may already be underway.

Short has spoken publicly about Katherine’s death with remarkable openness. On a May episode of CBS News Sunday Morning, he drew a direct parallel to the loss of his wife. “Mental health and cancer, like my wife had, are both diseases,” he said. “Sometimes with diseases, they are terminal. My daughter fought for a long time with extreme mental health, borderline personality disorder, other things, and did the best she could until she couldn’t.” He’s since become an advocate for mental health awareness through the organization Bring Change to Mind, calling for people to stop hiding from the word “suicide” and treat it as what it is — the possible final stage of an illness.

It’s been an unimaginable stretch of grief. And seeing him out, laughing, leaning close to someone who clearly cares about him — it means something.

The Romance That Dares Not Speak Its Name

The Streep-Short will-they-won’t-they has been one of pop culture’s most beloved slow burns. It started heating up in January 2024 when they sat together at the Golden Globes — a moment that famously caught Selena Gomez’s attention and set off a thousand memes. A rep quickly issued the standard denial: “They are just very good friends, nothing more.” Short himself doubled down on the Club Random podcast that same month: “We’re not a couple. We are just very close friends.”

Then came the hand-holding at the Only Murders in the Building Season 4 premiere party in August 2024. Then repeat dinners at Giorgio Baldi in Santa Monica. Then a backstage photo at Tom Hanks’ play This World of Tomorrow, the two of them tucked in alongside Steve Martin and Anne Stringfield, Hanks and Rita Wilson. Then Amy Schumer, never one to stay quiet, told People in February 2025 after spotting them at SNL’s 50th anniversary: “I think that the tea is, I think Marty might be off the market. That’s what I’m seeing.”

Short has also been openly smitten in interviews — just never quite in the way that would make it official. During a June 2025 appearance on the Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend podcast, he admitted that working with Streep made him nervous in a way he hadn’t felt in years. “I remember the first day working with Meryl and driving to the studio and thinking, ‘I’m nervous today,'” he said. “I [hadn’t] been nervous going to the set for a long time.”

He went on to describe their very first scene together on Only Murders — a flirtatious piano moment — and how Streep, sensing his nerves, simply said in the holding area: “OK, nerves to half.” Short’s response: “Wait a second, I was nervous. You can’t be nervous.”

On the show, their characters got married. In real life, they keep showing up together in cities around the world. You do the math.

Season 6 Takes the Gang to London

There’s also a practical reason the two are in the same city right now. Only Murders in the Building is currently shooting its sixth season in London — the first time the Netflix series has filmed outside the United States. Steve Martin has been posting cheerful tourist content from the city, including shots at Trafalgar Square and a gift shop selling “London” beanies. The whole gang is there.

Streep joined the show as Loretta Durkin in Season 3, and she’s been a recurring presence since. Last month, she and Short reportedly floated the idea of a Broadway return together — which, if it happens, would give fans even more reason to obsess over their chemistry.

For now, their reps aren’t saying anything new. But a fan who randomly picked a London restaurant and ended up two tables away from Meryl Streep and Martin Short, watching them laugh and lean into each other all night, already said everything that needed to be said.

The post Meryl Streep & Martin Short’s London Date Has Fans Swooning appeared first on Cream.

• The Devil Wears Prada 2 has grossed $433.2 million globally in under two weeks, surpassing the original’s entire run.
• The film’s plot tackles media industry collapse, AI-driven layoffs, and the death of print journalism.
• Disney’s marketing campaign secured brand partnerships valued at $250 million — the studio’s largest ever by number of partners.
• The first trailer broke 20th Century’s record with 222 million views in its first 24 hours.
• Meryl Streep, Anne Hathaway, Emily Blunt, and Stanley Tucci all return, alongside new cast members and a Lady Gaga cameo.

Twenty years after Miranda Priestly first made an entire industry flinch, The Devil Wears Prada 2 has arrived — and it’s not just a sequel. It’s a $433 million cultural event that nobody, apparently, was prepared for.

In under two weeks, the film has already blown past the original’s $326 million lifetime global haul. As of Mother’s Day weekend, it sits at $433.2 million worldwide — $144.8 million domestically and a staggering $288.4 million overseas — making it the biggest female-led movie since Barbie in 2023. It dropped only 43 percent in its second domestic weekend, which in Hollywood terms is the sign of a genuine word-of-mouth sensation, not just opening-weekend hype.

What nobody quite anticipated was how much the movie would resonate beyond the fashion world. Yes, there are the stilettos and the cerulean callbacks and the Dior. But the story driving this sequel is something rawer: the slow-motion collapse of journalism as we knew it.

The Movie’s Real Villain Is the Media Industry

“Do you remember when magazines were a thing?” It’s a throwaway line from Emily — now a top Dior executive, once Miranda’s first assistant — but it lands like a gut punch for anyone who’s worked in media. That single question essentially announces what this film is actually about.

Meryl Streep returns as Miranda Priestly, still the editor-in-chief of Runway. Stanley Tucci is back as Nigel, her right-hand man. Emily Blunt’s Emily has climbed to the executive ranks at Dior. And Anne Hathaway’s Andy Sachs, once the second assistant who barely survived Miranda’s orbit, is now Runway’s features editor — which means she has a front-row seat to everything falling apart. Layoffs. AI gutting editorial jobs. A media landscape increasingly dependent on tech money and the moods of tech billionaires to keep the lights on.

Screenwriter Aline Brosh McKenna, who also wrote the original, was direct about why she wanted to go there. “It seemed like they would be in the same type of existential crises that we are in in Hollywood, frankly — a massive amount of pressure to make everything monetized to within an inch of itself, in a world where we don’t know how to make money off of digital media,” she said. “And you know, it’s a comedy. So distress is your friend.”

Director David Frankel — whose father was an executive editor at The New York Times — didn’t soften it. “I do think it’s horrible what’s happened to journalists,” he said. “The movie is meant to spread joy and give some relief from the harsh realities of the world we live in. But I think the best kinds of entertainment are ones that meld some frothiness with some undergirding of serious intent. Journalism is in a bad place right now, objectively. Any time you’re living in a country where the First Amendment is under assault, you need to be concerned.”

Audiences, it turns out, were ready to hear it. The vegetables blended into the froth, as one observer put it, went down just fine — $240 million in opening weekend alone.

How Disney Pulled Off the Biggest Female-Led Marketing Campaign in Years

The path to this moment wasn’t obvious. When it became clear that Avengers: Doomsday wouldn’t be ready to open the summer, Disney movie chief Alan Bergman made a call that raised eyebrows internally: put The Devil Wears Prada 2 in the May 5 slot. The original, after all, had opened in early summer 2006 against Superman Returns and won — costing just $40 million to make while earning $326 million. The sequel cost $100 million and, so far, it’s looking like an even better bet.

But selling a sequel set two decades later, in a world where the glamour of print media has been replaced by existential dread about it, required something extraordinary. Disney’s marketing team — led by Martha Morrison, head of marketing at Disney Entertainment Studios, and Lylle Breier, executive VP of partnerships — built what the studio describes as the largest brand partnership campaign in its history by number of partners, with contributions valued at $250 million.

“The partnership campaigns are incomparable to anything we’ve done before,” Breier told The Hollywood Reporter. “We set out to have it be the best marketing partnership program that’s ever launched, and I think even delivered it ahead of a movie like Avengers.”

The partner list reads like a luxury department store directory: Dior (which plays a key role in the film itself), Google, Coca-Cola (running campaigns for both Diet Coke and Smartwater), Grey Goose, Mercedes-Benz, L’Oréal Paris, Lancôme, Zillow, TRESemmé, and United Airlines, among dozens of others. The fashion and beauty industry’s enthusiasm for this one was a complete reversal from 2006, when most luxury houses steered clear for fear of upsetting Anna Wintour.

This time, Disney was flooded with requests.

The moments that cut through were the clever ones. At the Academy Awards, Hathaway and Wintour presented together and riffed on the first film — a full-circle moment that generated headlines globally. L’Oréal Paris launched its Prada campaign at the Oscars with a spot featuring Kendall Jenner being mistaken for a new Miranda assistant candidate, alongside Simone Ashley, who plays an assistant in the sequel. It went viral immediately, exactly as intended.

Lancôme used the film to launch its new “Age is Nothing But a Number” Longevity MD skincare line, with a spot featuring Prada 2 co-stars Caleb Hearon and Pauline Chalamet — yes, Timothée Chalamet’s sister — desperately trying to track down the product for their boss. A second spot had Chalamet running into Lancôme ambassador Isabella Rossellini playing a Miranda-type figure. It was the luxury brand’s first-ever official Hollywood partnership.

“We wanted everything to be funny and bespoke,” Breier said. “But again, one of the things we really tried hard to do is not give away the movie, or have the brand spots use a ton of movie footage, but instead be part of the world.”

Even the unofficial moments worked. When Streep appeared on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert in early April wearing a blue cashmere J.Crew sweater — a nod to Miranda’s famous cerulean lecture — the $198 custom piece sold out almost immediately. A $49.99 version did too.

The first trailer, released in February, racked up more than 222 million views in its first 24 hours, becoming the most-watched trailer in 20th Century’s history. The team’s biggest challenge from there was converting that enthusiasm among older audiences into genuine ticket sales from Gen Z and younger Millennials. On opening day, 29 percent of buyers were between 25 and 34, with another 11 percent between 18 and 24. Mission accomplished.

The timing helped too. The film opened May 5, which meant its stars — including Lady Gaga, who makes a cameo — were making headlines at the Met Gala the very next day. Mother’s Day fell on its second weekend. It beat Mortal Kombat II in a domestic upset. Everything clicked.

Fashion, the Devil, and a Very Long History

At the world premiere, Streep leaned all the way into Miranda’s devilish mythology — arriving in long black gloves, Miranda’s signature sunglasses, and a flowing red leather cape from Givenchy’s Winter 2026 collection. It was a moment, and a deliberate one.

The “devil” in the title has always done more work than it appears. Fashion and Christianity have been tangled together for centuries — sometimes as adversaries, sometimes as strange collaborators. The 18th-century founder of Methodism, John Wesley, urged his followers to dress “neatly” and “plainly” as an expression of faith. Fashion, by contrast, was long cast as the enemy of spiritual purity: material desire made wearable.

And yet Christian imagery has shaped the industry in ways that are hard to overstate. Designers from Cristóbal Balenciaga to Geoffrey Beene drew on the austere elegance of Catholic vestments. Gianni Versace put the Virgin Mary on a bejeweled halter top in his Fall/Winter 1991 collection — a moment that, according to Wake Forest University religion scholar Lynn S. Neal, reflected a broader cultural shift away from institutional religion toward individual spiritual expression. “Christian symbols were lifted from church contexts and recirculated through popular culture, including fashion, in new ways,” Neal writes in her research on the subject.

Dolce & Gabbana have returned to Christian themes repeatedly — their 1998 “Stromboli” collection, their 2013 “Tailored Mosaic” line inspired by Sicilian cathedral mosaics, and most recently a 2025 menswear collection drawing on Catholic priestly vestments. At New York Fashion Week in 2026, a luxury brand called YesuGod sent looks down the runway adorned with the words “anno domini” and “the Lord is Coming.”

The devil, by contrast, has always been a bit player in this story — showing up in mid-century perfume ads and lingerie campaigns as a symbol of delicious transgression, then fading again. It’s the saints, Mary, and the iconography of holiness that have genuinely taken root on the runway.

Which makes it fitting, in a way, that Miranda Priestly — imperious, untouchable, dressed in white — has always read less like a devil and more like a deity. The title was always a bit of misdirection. The real power in that story, and in this one, isn’t hellish at all.

“Reminding people what they love so much about the first movie and then asking them to come and revisit these characters and see where they are 20 years later,” Morrison said, “was definitely a big factor in getting all audiences of all ages excited.”

At $433 million and climbing, it seems safe to say they succeeded.

The post Devil Wears Prada 2 Is Already a Phenomenon appeared first on Cream.

• Meryl Streep, Anne Hathaway, and Emily Blunt each earned $12.5 million for The Devil Wears Prada 2 via a “favored nations” deal
• All three stars could earn over $20 million each once box office bonuses kick in — and the film has already grossed $253 million in six days
• Meanwhile, a viral extra named Matthew Ables worked 15 hours on set and took home just $28.50 after buying a required suit
• Ables’ TikTok about his experience racked up 18 million combined views after the film’s May 1 premiere
• The $100 million sequel’s entire leading cast salary — $37.5 million — exceeded the first film’s entire production budget

The Devil Wears Prada 2 is a story of two very different paydays. Meryl Streep, Anne Hathaway, and Emily Blunt each walked away with $12.5 million — and that’s before bonuses. Meanwhile, a Los Angeles content creator named Matthew Ables spent 15 hours on set, appeared in three seconds of the film, and netted $28.50 after buying the suit he was required to wear.

Both stories went viral this week, and together they paint a pretty vivid picture of Hollywood’s food chain.

$12.5 Million Each — and Meryl Made Sure Everyone Got the Same

According to Variety, which spoke to multiple sources close to the production, Streep was the linchpin. 20th Century Studios came to the table knowing she was the one who had to say yes — and she did, for $12.5 million. But here’s the part that’s genuinely surprising: Streep could have commanded significantly more to reprise Miranda Priestly’s silver bob, and instead she brokered what’s known in the industry as a “favored nations” deal, ensuring Hathaway and Blunt received exactly the same salary.

It’s a rare and notably classy move — one that honors the ensemble energy that made the original 2006 film such an enduring classic. On screen, Miranda treats her underlings like furniture. Off screen, Streep apparently had her costars’ backs.

The base salaries are just the start. All three women negotiated box office bonuses tied to pre-agreed grossing milestones, and those bonuses have already begun paying out. With the film crossing $253 million globally in its first six days, sources told Variety each star could ultimately earn over $20 million if audiences keep showing up — which, based on projections of up to $42 million in its second weekend, seems likely.

To put that in perspective: the combined $37.5 million in star salaries alone exceeded the entire $35 million budget of the original Devil Wears Prada. The sequel carried a $100 million budget, which director David Frankel has previously acknowledged was spent largely on cast. Interestingly, Variety notes this still isn’t the largest payday of Streep’s career — that honor goes to her work on Netflix’s 2021 film Don’t Look Up, where the streaming giant’s back-end buyout structure resulted in an even bigger check.

Representatives for 20th Century Studios, CAA (which represents all three actresses), Streep, and Blunt declined to comment. Reps for Hathaway did not return requests.

The Extra Who Made $28.50 — and Ate Butter Chicken Next to Dinosaur Fossils

Now for the other end of the spectrum.

Matthew Ables was just walking through Midtown Manhattan last July when he spotted something unmistakable: Meryl Streep, in full Miranda Priestly mode, filming outside 1221 Sixth Avenue — the building used as the offices of the fictional Runway magazine. A crowd had gathered, sensing something was happening. Then, as Ables described it, “we see the wig. And then she turns around and starts waving to everyone.”

Rather than just watch, Ables spotted a posted notice with the name of the production company and tracked down the background casting department. Two weeks later, he had an email asking him to report to set for two roles: a Met Gala paparazzo and — this is genuinely great — an “Angry Upscale Central Park Pedestrian in a Rush.”

The casting call required multiple wardrobe options for each role, including a suit for the gala scene. Ables hit Macy’s, H&M, and Urban Outfitters in a frenzy, then reported to the holding area at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on West 83rd Street, alongside hundreds of other extras. He changed into his new black Alfani suit, and then a wardrobe team member called out asking if anyone was wearing a designer suit. Ables, who by his own admission knows little about fashion, thought Alfani was Armani. He said yes. It did not go well.

“She thought I was trying to lie to her and get better placement in the scene so she got angry and was like, ‘We don’t have time to mess around on this set,'” Ables recalled to the New York Post. Fortunately, the suit passed muster for both scenes, so he was able to return everything else he’d bought.

The Central Park pedestrian scene took about an hour — real passersby kept wandering into the shot. Then came the Met Gala scene, filmed on the steps of the American Museum of Natural History starting at 9 p.m., with Streep and Stanley Tucci (who plays Runway’s art director) present for most of the night. They filmed it roughly 25 times. Wrapped at 3 a.m.

Somewhere in the middle of all that, extras broke for dinner inside the museum’s lobby. “The food was good, they had spaghetti and butter chicken, but it was interesting because I was eating around these fossils of dinosaurs,” Ables said. He also noted that one crew member had a particularly unglamorous assignment: collecting every piece of trash from every extra and sorting it for recycling, piece by piece.

After 15 hours, Ables received a check for $238.50. But the suit had cost him $210. His actual take-home: $28.50. “The suit came out to about $210, so I didn’t lose money in the end,” he said — finding the bright side with the energy of someone who genuinely doesn’t regret any of it.

He made a video about the experience that racked up 18 million combined views. So in terms of content ROI, Matthew Ables arguably had a pretty good day.

@jeremythetea

Thank you @20th Century Studios & @The Devil Wears Prada 2 for inviting me to check out the new Fashion Emergency Vending Machine at Disney Springs! 👠✨ #devilwearsprada #devilwearsprada2 #disneysprings #amc #disneyworld

♬ RUNWAY – Lady Gaga & Doechii

The Machine Behind the Movie

While Ables was sorting out his suit situation in the holding area, Disney’s marketing team was building one of the most elaborate studio campaigns in recent memory. The fictional Runway magazine was actually printed as a real 90-plus-page issue — with Emily Blunt on the cover as her character Emily Charlton — and distributed at newsstands that popped up in New York and Los Angeles. A giant red shoe with a pitchfork heel toured high-traffic plazas in six cities. Branded vending machines at AMC theaters let fans select their “fashion emergency” and receive a L’Oréal product or a copy of the magazine in return.

The world premiere at Lincoln Center on April 20 turned the entire courtyard into a fashion runway — tented, draped in silk and sheer fabric, and streamed live on Disney+, Hulu, TikTok, and ABC News. Partners included Dior, Samsung, Mercedes-Maybach, and Google, which recreated Runway’s fashion closet with a virtual try-on activation. Starbucks sent three assistants and an intern in green trench coats to deliver coffee on the red carpet. Grey Goose temporarily rebranded as Cerulean Goose and served reimagined espresso martinis inspired by Miranda Priestly’s coffee order.

“We decided that we were not going to do a standard step-and-repeat or anything that looked standard at a movie premiere, but instead, we were going to make it feel like the fashion event of the season,” said Lylle Breier, EVP of global marketing partnerships at Disney. Twenty official promotional partners. Some collaborations two years in the making. A campaign that Breier described simply as: “Everybody wants this.”

Miranda Priestly would probably find something to criticize. But $253 million in six days suggests the rest of the world disagrees.

The post Devil Wears Prada 2: Stars’ Salaries vs. One Extra’s $28.50 appeared first on Cream.

• The Devil Wears Prada 2 opened to $77M domestically and $233M globally, already outpacing the original’s entire run
• Meryl Streep initially turned down the first film — then doubled her asking price and got it
• Streep’s Miranda Priestly performance in 2006 launched a second wave of stardom that made her a mainstream icon
• Streep has never attended the Met Gala despite standing invitations — her rep confirmed it’s simply “never been her scene”
• The sequel marks Streep’s biggest box office debut ever, and her first major theatrical release since 2017’s The Post

Twenty years ago, Meryl Streep walked onto a film set in a silver wig, spoke barely above a whisper, and changed her career forever. Now, with The Devil Wears Prada 2 opening to $233 million worldwide in its debut weekend — the second-biggest global launch of 2026 — it’s worth asking: how did a “chick flick” about a fashion magazine turn the most celebrated actress of her generation into a genuine pop culture icon?

The short answer is Miranda Priestly. The longer answer involves a salary negotiation, a near-retirement, and a performance so controlled it rewrote what audiences thought Meryl Streep was capable of.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=PMd1at7OwiE%3Fsi%3Des054YjvQ4PAUFwt

The Legend Before the Icon

By 2006, Streep was already a monument. Two Oscars from 13 nominations. Collaborations with Michael Cimino, Mike Nichols, Robert Zemeckis, Clint Eastwood, and Spike Jonze. An AFI Life Achievement Award at 55. She had delivered what many consider the greatest screen performance in cinema history with Sophie’s Choice in 1982 — playing a Holocaust survivor forced to choose which of her children would die — and won her second Oscar for it. She had also famously rewritten her own dialogue in Kramer vs. Kramer, insisting her character not be reduced to a lazy villain, and crafted a courtroom scene so raw it’s startling to learn the script didn’t provide it.

She was, by every measure, a legend. But “legend” and “beloved” are not always the same thing.

The image that had calcified around Streep was of a technically formidable, accent-perfecting, award-collecting force who trafficked in suffering. Audiences respected her enormously and occasionally found her exhausting. Her comedic ventures didn’t move the box office needle. She was entering her 40s in an industry that treats women in their 40s as a problem to be managed. Quirkier projects like Adaptation and Angels in America kept her credibility intact, but nothing had cracked open a new mainstream audience for her.

Then came the call about a movie based on Lauren Weisberger’s 2003 novel about working as a personal assistant to a thinly-veiled Anna Wintour.

She said no.

The Negotiation That Changed Everything

Streep has since revealed on Open Book with Jenna that she initially turned the role down flat. “They called me up, and they made an offer, and I said ‘No. I’m not going to do it,'” she recalled. She was 56 and, by her own admission, contemplating retirement. “I’m 56 years old, it took me this long to understand that I could do that.”

What changed her mind was a realization about leverage. She recognized the script’s potential — and decided to test it. “I wanted to see if I doubled my ask,” she said, “and they went right away and said, ‘Sure.'” She was in.

The producers had reportedly been hesitant about casting her at all, unsure she could be funny. (A baffling concern for anyone who has seen Death Becomes Her.) What they got was something more interesting than funny: a performance of icy, aristocratic minimalism that made every other choice in the film look loud by comparison.

What Made Miranda Priestly Work

The Miranda of Weisberger’s novel is not a complicated creation. She’s a pantomime villain — mean-spirited, thinly drawn, a punching bag in reverse. That works fine for a beach read. It doesn’t work for a film you want people to quote for two decades.

Streep’s Miranda never raises her voice. She doesn’t need to. A raised eyebrow does the damage. An imperious pause before “That’s all” lands harder than any shout. The famous cerulean monologue — where Miranda dismantles Andy’s smug certainty about fashion being beneath her — is delivered with the calm of someone who has already won every argument she’s ever entered. The genius is that Streep plays the character as someone whose aloofness is partly genuine and partly armor, a woman who has helped shape a brutal world and knows exactly what it cost her.

She’s monstrous and magnetic in equal measure. As Tina Fey once put it, b*tches get stuff done — and you never doubt Miranda’s power, even as you wince at how she wields it.

The performance earned Streep her 15th Oscar nomination. More importantly, it earned her something she hadn’t quite had before: a fandom.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=-rDTRuCOs9g%3Fsi%3DDm6GU7100sKODgN7

The Second Wave

As The Devil Wears Prada stuck around in theaters for months — and then in the culture for years — it became clear that Streep’s performance was the adhesive holding the whole thing together. Younger audiences who had no particular attachment to Sophie’s Choice or Kramer vs. Kramer were doing impressions of Miranda Priestly. Making memes. Wearing the aesthetic. You can’t make a meme from a Holocaust drama. You absolutely can from “By all means, move at a glacial pace.”

What followed was a genuine reinvention. Mamma Mia! in 2008 proved she could carry a broad, exuberantly silly crowd-pleaser and make audiences dance in the aisles with her. Julie & Julia made her a smash with the older female demographic that Hollywood chronically ignores. It’s Complicated opposite Alec Baldwin and Steve Martin gave her a rom-com hit. Even The Iron Lady — arguably one of her clumsier performances, playing Margaret Thatcher as equal parts camp harridan and underestimated girlboss — pulled in $115 million worldwide and handed her a third Oscar. None of those films had the precise wit of The Devil Wears Prada, but they all ran on the same newly ignited current: Meryl, having fun, letting audiences in.

She had cracked a new model of screen-icon status. Not the cold, chameleonic technician of the prestige-drama years. Something warmer, more accessible — a great Hollywood entertainer who happened to also be the greatest actress alive.

The Sequel, the Comeback, and the Met Gala She Never Attended

Getting Streep back for a sequel was no small feat. Director David Frankel, screenwriter Aline Brosh McKenna, and the entire original cast had publicly dismissed the idea for years. “I think we’re all on record multiple times saying we wouldn’t do a sequel,” McKenna admitted. “I think I said that in 2021!” What unlocked it, Frankel said, was McKenna’s screenplay — a vision that felt genuinely new rather than a rehash. Streep agreed when she felt the project offered “an opportunity to say something completely new about these characters and about the world that they inhabit.”

That world has changed considerably. The Devil Wears Prada 2 picks up Andy Sachs returning to Runway as a features editor, navigating a media landscape decimated by tech money and clickbait economics — a timely hook that gave the story real stakes beyond nostalgia. The full original cast returned: Anne Hathaway, Emily Blunt, and Stanley Tucci, all back in the hallowed halls of Runway.

Hathaway, for her part, has been effusive about the experience. “I loved making the first,” she told People. “I know I was stressed and anxious and all those things, but it’s one of the most hilarious experiences ever because of the people I was with.” Of Streep specifically, she said: “She’s someone I admire. Someone who defines how it’s done. Somebody who is just living greatness and never rests on that laurel, but is always pushing herself to expand as an artist. She’s unbelievable.”

The timing of the release — opening May 1, the day before the Met Gala — was not accidental. Miranda Priestly is, of course, a character built in Anna Wintour’s image, and Wintour has chaired the Met benefit for over three decades. Social media lit up with speculation that Streep herself would finally make her Met debut. She didn’t. She never has. “Meryl has been invited to the Met Gala for many years but has never attended,” her representative told People in a statement. “While she appreciates Vogue, Anna, and her incredible imagination and stamina — it has never quite been her scene.”

What Miranda Priestly does wear to a Met Gala-esque event in the sequel’s opening scene, though, is a plunging scarlet Balenciaga gown that Streep helped select herself. Costume designer Molly Rogers recalled their initial lunch meeting: “Almost at the same time, we both said, ‘It’s going to be red. The devil reappears in red! Case closed.'”

A Box Office Force at 76

The Devil Wears Prada 2‘s $233 million global opening ranks as the second-biggest worldwide debut of 2026, trailing only The Super Mario Galaxy Movie and beating the Michael Jackson biopic Michael. It’s already expected to outgross the original’s entire $326 million lifetime haul before the month is out. Disney spent roughly $100 million to produce it and another $80 million on marketing — a bet that is paying off spectacularly, with 76% of the opening weekend audience being women and an enthusiastic A- CinemaScore.

For context: the original Devil Wears Prada opened to $27.5 million in 2006. This is a different scale entirely.

“This is a sensational opening for a comedy-drama,” said box office analyst David A. Gross. “Very few dramedies do this kind of business once, let alone a second time that’s bigger.” The New York Times noted it’s the biggest domestic debut for a traditional comedy since Pitch Perfect in 2015.

Streep, now a 21-time Oscar nominee, a four-time Emmy winner, and a Kennedy Center honoree, hasn’t led a wide theatrical release since Steven Spielberg’s The Post in 2017. Her recent work — Don’t Look Up, The Prom, Let Them All Talk — all went to streaming. The multiplex missed her. This weekend proved the feeling was mutual.

In a promotional interview that cut through the usual PR polish, Streep was asked whether she’d softened Miranda for the sequel. Her answer said everything about where she stands in the industry right now: “I think when we tend to Marvel-ize the movies now — we got the villains and we got the good guys — and it’s so boring. What’s really interesting about life is that some of the heroes are flawed and some of the villains are human and interesting and have their own strengths. So that’s what I like about this. It’s messier.”

It takes a certain kind of star to casually dismiss the Marvel machine while promoting the film kicking off Disney’s summer slate. But that’s precisely the point. The Devil Wears Prada didn’t just make Meryl Streep an icon. It made her the kind of icon who doesn’t have to answer to anyone — and knows it.

Up next: a Joni Mitchell biopic from Cameron Crowe, a lead role opposite Sigourney Weaver in Joseph Cedar’s corporate thriller Useful Idiots, and a matriarch turn in a TV adaptation of Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections. Whatever she does, the audience will follow. Miranda Priestly made sure of that.

The post How Miranda Priestly Made Meryl Streep a Pop Culture Icon appeared first on Cream.

• The Devil Wears Prada 2 debuted at No. 1 globally with $233.6M worldwide and $77M domestically in its opening weekend
• The sequel nearly triples the original 2006 film’s $27.5M domestic opening and already represents 72% of its entire lifetime gross
• Meryl Streep, Anne Hathaway, Emily Blunt, and Stanley Tucci all return alongside original director David Frankel
• The film earned an “A” CinemaScore and broke even — turning a profit — within its first 24 to 48 hours of release
• It marks the highest-ever opening weekend for a Meryl Streep film

Miranda Priestly is back. And she did not come to play.

The Devil Wears Prada 2 stormed into theaters this weekend and immediately rewrote the record books, debuting at No. 1 both domestically and globally with a jaw-dropping $233.6 million worldwide haul. Of that, $77 million came from North American audiences alone — nearly triple the $27.5 million the original earned when it opened in the summer of 2006. Internationally, audiences contributed over $156 million, making this the second-biggest worldwide opening of 2026, behind only The Super Mario Galaxy Movie.

Disney and 20th Century Studios had to be holding their breath going in. Sequels to beloved, non-franchise films are notoriously tricky, and reuniting the original cast — Meryl Streep, Anne Hathaway, Emily Blunt, and Stanley Tucci — plus bringing back director David Frankel required a $100 million budget, more than double the original’s $35-40 million. But the gamble paid off almost immediately. Aided by ferocious word-of-mouth and an “A” CinemaScore from exit polls, the film effectively broke even and turned a profit within roughly 24 to 48 hours of its global rollout.

“Some things never go out of fashion,” Paul Dergarabedian, head of marketplace trends at Comscore, told CNBC. “It’s difficult to predict whether audiences will embrace or reject a sequel to a beloved original, but the creative teams, the marketing folks and the distribution team of Disney’s 20th Century Studios put together an irresistible hit movie that had not just appeal in the United States but also around the world.”

The $77 million domestic debut places the film fourth on the year’s domestic chart, behind The Super Mario Galaxy Movie ($131M), Michael ($97.5M), and Project Hail Mary ($80M). But the story overseas is where Prada 2 really made its mark — and where it’s clear that millennial and Gen X audiences around the world were ready to return to Runway magazine in a big way.

What This Means for Streep, Hathaway, and the Summer Season

This is the highest opening weekend of Meryl Streep’s entire career. Let that sink in. One of the most decorated actors in Hollywood history, and it took a fashion-world sequel at age 76 to give her the biggest box office debut of her life. It’s also one of the best openings ever for a film headlined by a female-centric cast — in the same conversation as the Wicked films and Pitch Perfect 2, ahead of Maleficent and the live-action Cinderella.

The original Devil Wears Prada was a quiet overachiever. In the summer of 2006, packed with Superman, X-Men, and Pirates of the Caribbean, a Streep-and-Hathaway dramedy about journalism and the fashion industry felt like counterprogramming before anyone used that word seriously. It never hit No. 1, but it didn’t need to — it ran long and quiet and earned $124.7 million domestically and $326.5 million worldwide on a modest budget. Twenty years later, the sequel arrived and did in one weekend what the original did in months.

By next weekend, The Devil Wears Prada 2 is expected to surpass the original’s entire worldwide lifetime gross. It currently represents 72% of that number after just three days.

The Rest of the Weekend

The Michael Jackson biopic Michael held impressively in second place, dropping only 44% to add $54 million domestically in its second frame. Its worldwide total now sits at $423-424 million — remarkable numbers for a biopic, even one with a price tag estimated between $150-200 million. The film is firmly on track to cross half a billion globally.

The Super Mario Galaxy Movie continued its long, sturdy run in third place, adding $12.1 million in its fifth weekend to bring its domestic total to $402.6 million and its worldwide haul to $894 million. The billion-dollar watch is officially on.

Project Hail Mary, directed by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, became the first film since Avatar: Fire and Ash to spend seven consecutive weekends in the top five. Its $8.5 million this weekend brings its domestic total to $318.3 million, with a global finish potentially approaching $700 million — a number only five Hollywood films hit in all of 2025.

Neon’s horror newcomer Hokum, starring Adam Scott and directed by Damian McCarthy, rounded out the top five with $6.4 million from 1,885 theaters. With an 86% critics score, it’s the distributor’s best opening since last summer’s Together.

In the U.K. and Ireland specifically, Prada 2 opened to £9.3 million ($12.6 million), also landing at No. 1, per Comscore. Michael moved to second there with $9.4 million in its second frame, bringing its U.K. cumulative to $31.2 million.

Looking ahead, this coming weekend brings Mortal Kombat II, the Hugh Jackman family mystery The Sheep Detectives, and the James Cameron-directed Billie Eilish: Hit Me Hard and Soft — The Tour Live in 3D. It’ll be a crowded house. But this weekend belonged entirely to Prada — and to the four people who made us fall in love with it the first time.

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