MW 'The Devil Wears Prada' sequel is coming - but the glory days of magazines like Vogue are over

By Lukas I. Alpert

Ad spending on magazines has shrunk by nearly half since the first film came out in 2006, and the doorstop September issue is a thing of the past

"The Devil Wears Prada" was a biting satire of the glory days of ad-stuffed fashion magazines. A sequel is now in the works, but the world it will portray is likely to look very different, given how far the fortunes of magazines have fallen.

Walt Disney Co. $(DIS)$ has set a release date of May 1, 2026, for "The Devil Wears Prada 2" - by which time ad spending on consumer magazines will have fallen by nearly half compared with 2006, when the first film came out.

The movie, which was based on the best-selling 2003 novel of the same name, focused on the world of Miranda Priestly, the hard-driving, taste-making editor of the fictional Runway magazine. The character, played by Meryl Streep, was a thinly veiled sendup of Vogue's legendary editor Anna Wintour.

The movie depicted the heyday of glamour magazines, when they were highly profitable and filled with ads, and when editors and low-level staffers alike luxuriated in designer clothing samples and were driven around in black town cars on the company dime.

The fortunes of the magazine world faded fast, however, as ad dollars migrated from print to online. In 2024, ad spending on consumer magazines totaled $7.6 billion, according to PricewaterhouseCoopers, compared with $12.2 billion in 2004, just after the "Devil Wears Prada" novel came out. By 2008, online ad spending had surpassed that of magazines.

Ad spending on magazines is expected to further decline to $6.4 billion by 2028, PwC estimates.

The sequel will apparently address some of the pressures brought on by this decline. According to Variety, one storyline will feature the character played by Emily Blunt - Priestly's assistant in the first film - as a high-powered executive at a luxury brand group whose ad dollars Runway desperately needs.

A spokesperson for Conde Nast, which publishes Vogue, didn't immediately respond to a message seeking comment.

With only a handful of major consumer magazine publishers left, the industry has changed substantially since 2006. Time Inc. is gone. So is Meredith Corp., the longtime publisher of Better Homes & Gardens. Wenner Media, home to Rolling Stone, and American Media Inc., which published the National Enquirer, have also been swallowed up.

The only big magazine publishers left are Conde Nast, which along with Vogue puts out titles such as Vanity Fair and the New Yorker, and the Hearst Corporation, which publishes Cosmopolitan, Esquire and Harper's Bazaar, among others.

Barry Diller's IAC Inc. (IAC) also now owns many of the former Time and Meredith publications, including People, Better Homes & Gardens and Southern Living.

But all operate under far greater budget constraints than they did two decades ago.

The original "Devil Wears Prada" film was a box-office smash, making $327 million worldwide. Whether the sequel will fare better than the magazine world it portrays remains to be seen.

-Lukas I. Alpert

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May 23, 2025 13:48 ET (17:48 GMT)

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