The sequel bumped Michael into second place, though the musical biopic held well in its second weekend.
The Devil Wears Prada 2, which opened in 4150 locations, finds Anne Hathaway's Andy Sachs working once more for Meryl Streep's Miranda Priestly at the fictional Runway magazine in a much-depleted media landscape.
The movie cost a reported $US100 million to produce - a significant boost from the first movie's $US35 million production budget.
Stars Streep, Hathaway, Emily Blunt and Stanley Tucci have been on a fashion-forward global publicity blitz for weeks, with glamorous stops in Tokyo, London and New York. Even Anna Wintour, the inspiration for the Prada-clad devil, has been involved this time, appearing with Hathaway on the Oscars stage and with Streep on the cover of Vogue.
The first movie opened in June 2006 and would go on to earn over $US326 million worldwide. And perhaps more importantly, it firmly became part of the culture thanks in part to its ever-quotable likes ("gird your loins," "groundbreaking," "that's all").
Legacy sequels are never a sure thing, but this time anticipation was high: According to Nielsen, streaming viewership for The Devil Wears Prada was up 428 per cent from March 2026 to April 2026.
Second place went to Lionsgate's Michael Jackson biopic Michael, which made $US54 million in its second weekend in North America, where it's playing on 3955 screens. Its running worldwide total is already $US423.9 million.
"This is on the great end of what we had speculated might happen, but we were very confident that we were going to have a great hold even with the assumption that Prada would do a lot of business," said Lionsgate Motion Picture Group chairman Adam Fogelson.
Prada alone actually did better business than last year's US summer kickoff Marvel movie, Thunderbolts.
There were several other new films in cinemas over the weekend, including the Adam Scott-led horror movie Hokum, Andy Serkis's animated adaptation of Animal Farm and the Aaron Eckhart- and Ben Kingsley-led survival movie Deep Water.
The annual box office is currently running about 14 per cent up from last year, with about $US2.8 billion in North American ticket sales to date.
Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at US and Canadian cinemas, according to Comscore:
1. The Devil Wears Prada 2, $US77 million.
2. Michael, $US54 million.
3. The Super Mario Galaxy Movie, $US12.1 million.
4. Project Hail Mary, $US8.6 million.
5. Hokum, $US6.4 million.
6. Animal Farm, $US3.4 million.
7. Lee Cronin's The Mummy, $US2.2 million.
8. Deep Water, $US2.2 million.
9. That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime the Movie: Tears of the Azure Sea, $US1 million.
10. The Drama, $US908,303.
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