Meryl Streep, not corporate franchise logic, lit the fuse on The Devil Wears Prada 2.

That is the clearest signal from screenwriter Aline Brosh McKenna, who says the sequel grew out of Streep’s involvement and not from Disney steering the project into motion. In a media landscape crowded with revivals, that detail matters. It suggests this follow-up did not begin as a brand exercise alone, but as a project anchored by the force that made the original movie feel bigger, sharper, and more dangerous than a standard fashion-world comedy.

Brosh McKenna also appears to know exactly what audiences want from a return to this world: fan service and fashion, in carefully measured doses. She has not opened the vault on story specifics, and reports indicate she is keeping the sequel’s biggest moves under wraps. But the message is plain enough. The creative team understands that viewers are coming back for the tone, the glamour, and the tension that made the first film endure.

“He’s there to remind her that it’s a Faust story.”

That same clarity shapes how Brosh McKenna still talks about the original film’s most debated choices. She stands by her writing of Adrian Grenier’s character, long criticized by some fans, and frames his purpose in moral rather than romantic terms. Her defense points back to the spine of The Devil Wears Prada: ambition always comes with a price. That reading casts the film less as a makeover fantasy and more as a story about seduction, compromise, and the personal cost of getting exactly what you think you want.

Key Facts

  • Aline Brosh McKenna says Meryl Streep served as the impetus for Devil Wears Prada 2.
  • She indicates the sequel did not originate simply from Disney pushing it forward.
  • Brosh McKenna points to fan service and fashion as part of the sequel’s appeal.
  • She continues to defend Adrian Grenier’s role in the original as central to its Faustian theme.

What happens next matters because sequels like this now carry a double burden: they must satisfy nostalgia without flattening what made the original sting. If Brosh McKenna and the team can preserve that moral edge while delivering the spectacle audiences expect, Devil Wears Prada 2 could do more than revisit a beloved title. It could test whether Hollywood still knows how to bring back a hit without sanding off its teeth.