Devil Wears Prada 2 Is Quietly Winning Over Indian Audiences

Nearly two decades after Miranda Priestly first made assistants tremble and audiences swoon, The Devil Wears Prada 2 has sashayed into Indian cinemas and is doing something quietly impressive — holding its ground without making a lot of noise about it.

With a five-day gross of Rs 18.55 crore and a first-week close projected around Rs 21 crore, the film is not setting the box office on fire, but it is doing what very few Hollywood sequels manage to pull off in India these days — it is sustaining. The opening weekend numbers were solid, driven by nostalgia and genuine excitement for a reunion that fans had been waiting years to see. The weekday dip was expected, but the film will need a meaningful second-weekend push to truly cement itself as a success story in this market.

For South Asian audiences, especially the diaspora in Australia, the UK, Canada, and the US who grew up watching the original as a cultural touchstone, this sequel carries real emotional weight. The Devil Wears Prada was never just a fashion film — it was about ambition, identity, and the price of success. Those themes resonate deeply with South Asian women navigating professional spaces where they have historically had to work twice as hard to be taken half as seriously. The sequel, with an ensemble that now includes Emily Blunt, Simone Ashley, Lucy Liu, and Pauline Chalamet alongside the iconic Streep and Hathaway, feels like a conversation across generations of women.

What is interesting from a box office perspective is where this film sits in the larger Hollywood-in-India picture. If it continues on its current trajectory, it is expected to surpass Lee Cronin’s The Mummy in lifetime collections, which would make it the fourth Hollywood hit in India this year. Whether it can reach the heights of Michael, the Jaafar Jackson-led biographical film that has already crossed Rs 46 crore, remains to be seen. That would require a performance spike that the film has not yet demonstrated on weekdays, but stranger things have happened when word of mouth is strong and the subject matter connects.

The casting of Simone Ashley — beloved by South Asian audiences worldwide thanks to Bridgerton — is worth noting as a pull factor that the original could never have offered. Her presence alone brought a fresh wave of interest from younger viewers who may have only known the original film through cultural references rather than firsthand viewing. That generational bridge is something Hollywood has been slowly learning to build when marketing to global South Asian audiences, and it appears to be working here, at least partly.

Ultimately, Rs 21 crore for a Hollywood sequel in India is not a number that will dominate headlines, but it reflects something more meaningful — that certain stories, when done with care and the right talent, find their audience regardless of how long they have had to wait. Miranda Priestly did not need to shout to be heard. Apparently, neither does her sequel.

So FilmiTalk wants to know — did you catch The Devil Wears Prada 2 in cinemas, and did it live up to the legacy of the original for you?