The Devil Wears Prada 2 makes an impressive $233m opening weekend at the box office | The Devil Wears Prada 2

Gird your loins: The Devil Wears Prada 2 has had a huge opening weekend at the box office, making $233m (£171m, A$323m) worldwide from a largely female audience.

The Devil Wears Prada 2 grossed $77m at the North American box office, and $156.6m worldwide. In the US and Canada, the sequel He beat Michael to second placethough the musical continued its second weekend to earn $54m, down just 44%.

Women make up about 76% of ticket buyers, according to PostTrak exit polls; 74% said they would “recommend” the video to a friend. Critics were a bit mixed on the sequelwhich finds Anne Hathaway’s Andy Sachs working for Meryl Streep’s Miranda Priestly on the fictional Runway magazine in the now-defunct media space.

The Devil Wears Prada 2 is the biggest opening weekend for a Meryl Streep film by any metric, beating the $90m worldwide of Mamma Mia: Here We Go Again in 2018. It’s also the biggest domestic and international opening for Emily Blunt, surpassing Oppenheimer’s $180.4m worldwide for the weekend.

The Devil Wears Prada 2 cost around $100m to make – a huge jump from the original production budget of $35m. But as the film’s producer, David Frankel, told the Associated Press, “After you pay all the world-famous actors, you still have the same budget to make this movie as we did the first one.”

Stars Streep, Hathaway, Emily Blunt and Stanley Tucci have been making international appearances for weeks, with glamorous stops in Tokyo, London and New York. Even Anna Wintour, the inspiration for Streep’s Miranda Priestly, was present this time, appearing with Hathaway on stage at the Oscars and and Streep on the cover of Vogue.

The first The Devil Wears Prada opened in June 2006 and grossed over $326m worldwide, not adjusted for inflation. And perhaps most importantly, it became part of the culture thanks to its catchy lyrics (“gird your loins,” “groundbreaking,” “that’s all”).

This weekend marks the start of Hollywood’s summer movie season, an important 18-week stretch that runs through Labor Day and sometimes accounts for about 40% of the annual box office. Usually there are Marvel blockbusters that are planned as the season premiere but the combined power of The Devil Wears Prada 2 and Michael was no substitute for hard work.

“This is a very strong week,” said Paul Dergarabedian, head of market research at Comscore. “It’s an irresistible combination that makes no other Marvel movie kick off the summer season.”

It is very rare for a female-led film to lead the first weekend of the summer box office in the US, which has usually been held by Marvel films in recent years. Prada did better business than last year’s Marvel debut, Thunder.

The North American box office is operating at around 14% from 2025, with around $2.8bn in domestic ticket sales to date.

The Associated Press contributed to this report