Kenneth Branagh to star in The Devil Wears Prada 2 as filming starts

Kenneth Branagh is set to join the cast of the long-awaited Devil Wears Prada 2, which begins filming this week.

The 64-year-old actor-writer-director, who won an Oscar in 2022 for Best Original Screenplay for his film Belfast, will play the husband of fashion magazine editor Miranda Priestly (Meryl Streep).

On Monday, 20th Century Studios announced that the sequel was finally in production almost twenty years after the original was released.

Last year, it was announced that Streep and Emily Blunt would be reprising their characters from the iconic film, while Anne Hathaway is also suspected to return. 

David Frankel will direct the sequel which reportedly follows Priestly struggling amid the decline of the magazine industry.

The fashion editor is supposedly forced to reconcile with her assistant Emily Charlton (Blunt), who is the head of a luxury brand with the kind of advertising budget Priestley needs to save her magazine.

In an interview with Entertainment Tonight last month, Blunt said: “Why are Meryl and I so mean to each other in every movie we do?”

She continued: “We always have beef with each other. I don’t know what it is. Let’s hope we remedy it. I’m not sure.”

The original comedy-drama film, released in 2006, was based on Lauren Weisberger’s 2003 novel of the same name.

It follows an aspiring journalist, Andy Sachs (Anne Hathaway), who is hired at a fashion magazine as a co-assistant, only to be mistreated by her demanding editor, Priestly.

The film made over $326m at the international box office, while Streep was nominated for best actress by the Screen Actors Guild.

Weisberger published a sequel to the novel in 2013, Revenge Wears Prada, and the film was transformed into a musical, premiering on the West End in 2024.

Branagh’s last role was as Hercule Poirot in A Haunting in Venice (2023), which was loosely based on Agatha Christie’s Hallowe’en Party (1969).

The film also marks Streep’s first cinematic performance since the black comedy Don’t Look Up (2021).

The Devil Wears Prada 2 is to be released in summer 2026.