Appearing on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” to promote “The Devil Wears Prada 2,” here’s what Anne Hathaway had to say:

There’s this yearning to see what these characters have been up to.

Now, Anne. I had to laugh! She’s nothing if not an enthusiastic participant in the promotion of her films. That’s never a bad thing.

But yearning? Yearning?

The first movie, which came out in 2006, has retained real staying power in pop culture over the past 20 years. It’s snappy and funny. The pacing perfect, the dialogue memorable. Meryl Streep’s withering magazine editor Miranda Priestly is a thousand times more compelling than the character's real-life inspiration, Anna Wintour. I love Theodore Shapiro’s score. And with its glossy sheen, the movie is great to look at.

As a story, “The Devil Wears Prada” does what it’s supposed to do. There’s an arc; characters start in one place and end in another. The movie has something to say, about high-status but crushing entry-level jobs and the machinations deployed by people in power as a matter of course. There’s a beginning, middle and an end, with a satisfying coda.

So satisfying that no, I never “yearned” to see what these characters have been up to. For me, they exist in the timeline of the film and that’s enough. I don’t give any thought to them outside of the bubble of that story. They’re interesting but not that interesting.

“Intellectual property” is a phrase so clinical, it takes all the romance out the idea of creativity. But that’s by design. As Streep pointed out in a recent interview: Everybody at the studio level wanted the goose to lay another golden egg. And Hollywood executives have decided that IP is a better bet, a safer bet, than original stories, dooming us to a never-ending supply of regurgitated offerings.

These titles are easier to market to audiences who (theoretically) have all kinds of pre-baked interest if a show or film is based on something familiar. It’s no coincidence marketing departments at the studios have been sliced down to bone amid recent industry layoffs. 

Will affection for the original “Devil Wears Prada” translate into big profits for 20th Century Studios (owned by Disney)? They’re certainly banking on it. I haven’t seen reports on what kind of pay bump was dangled to bring Streep and Hathaway on board for Round 2, but I’m guessing it was substantial. Also substantial, the marketing budget, which has sent the two stars on a worldwide promotional tour ahead of the movie’s release in theaters on May 1. 

But the studio is also looking to profit outside the box office. There’s a line of branded “Devil Wears Prada” merch on sale at Old Navy, including cerulean cable knit sweaters, a baseball hat with Miranda’s clipped send-off (“That’s all”) and T-shirts with other lines from the movie. 

Old Navy, of course, is exactly the kind of store Miranda & Co. would refer to as “tragic” (Casual Corner gets the ignoble designation in the original movie), but we’re supposed to think this marketing gambit isn’t tragic because … ? Sure, OK. Let’s hope more effort was put into the script for “The Devil Wears Temu” — sorry, “The Devil Wears Prada 2.”

Listen, maybe the new movie is good. Nothing would make me happier. We’ll find out soon enough.

Here we go again

I’ve written about reboot mania for the Chicago Tribune many times over. So much so that, in 2023, I noted:

Back in 2018 — when we were having this same conversation; good grief this column is a reboot  — NBCUniversal International Studios head Jeff Wachtel had this to say: “We would rather not do reboots. We prefer an original vision.” 

Two years later, he was out. 

The reboot mania remains as entrenched as ever.

But at least some of the announced TV and film projects I mentioned in that piece — a spinoff of “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off,” an “Ally McBeal” sequel and a Kenya Barris version of “The Wizard of Oz” — have yet to be made. Hopefully, they never will. 

But plenty more have arisen in their place, and more keep coming. There’s a “Baywatch” reboot somewhere in our future. Snore. A NCIS series has been added on the schedule this fall, this one set in New York and starring LL Cool J, who was in another NCIS set somewhere else. Apparently, he’s yet to become bored with the character (ahem, money) to actively pursue other roles. Or maybe he’s just not getting other roles. 

A third “Top Gun” is in the works, on the heels of the 2022 sequel “Top Gun: Maverick.” The 1986 original may be blatant military propaganda, but at least it’s fun. Probably because it bothers to have an actual story, about a guy who thinks flying fighter jets will solve his daddy issues. He’s surrounded by an assortment of characters who aren’t just a melange of people in uniform jostling for status. His romantic interest is a legitimately interesting presence who exists in the narrative for reasons beyond “catches the eye of the leading man.”

But “Maverick”? Aside from the (very good) scene between Tom Cruise and the late Val Kilmer, there’s no there there. It’s not a movie so much as a collection of scenes that fail to add up to anything cohesive, let alone entertaining. Didn’t matter, the movie made $1.5 billion globally, so here we go again. Everyone wants the goose to lay another golden egg.

An “Ocean’s 11” prequel has been announced starring Bradley Cooper and Margot Robbie that will take place in 1962 at the Monaco Grand Prix. According to Variety: “It won’t center on Danny Ocean, the con-man who led a Las Vegas casino heist for the ages in ‘Ocean’s 11,’ but instead on his crafty parents.” Sounds boring! Just come up with a new kind of heist with its own style, sensibility and interests! 

But I’m being hypocritical, because Steven Soderbergh’s 2001 original was a remake of the 1960 Rat Pack movie from director Lewis Milestone.

Also recently announced: 2007’s “The Nanny Diaries” (adapted from the 2002 book) is being rebooted as a television series. Because digging up old IP is the only way to tell the story of an aimless college grad who takes a job minding the child of extremely wealthy parents, duh.

But wait! Michael B. Jordan and Austin Butler will star in a “Miami Vice” big screen remake, despite the existence of a previous reboot from 2006 starring Jamie Foxx and Colin Farrell. This one will be called “Miami Vice ‘85”:

Per the film’s logline, [Joseph] Kosinski’s “Miami Vice ’85” will explore “the glamour and corruption of mid-80’s Miami” and is “inspired by the pilot episode and first season of the landmark television series that influenced culture and set the style of everything from fashion to filmmaking.”

I like Jordan and Butler as actors, but this sounds pointless considering the stars themselves might be the bigger draw at this point than the IP itself. Anyway, if you want to see the “glamour and corruption of mid-80s’s Miami” as filtered through the sensibility of the original show … you can just watch the original show? What are we doing here??

Mark Twain predicted all of this

Remakes are nothing new. In that piece from 2023, I noted that Mark Twain himself said as much:

And ironically, that holds true for his own work as far as Hollywood is concerned: His 1884 novel “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” has been made and remade several times over for the screen — first in 1918, again in 1920, 1931 and 1939. There was a lull for a few decades and then Hollywood was back at it in 1960, 1974, 1975 and 1993. 

But there’s a palpable cynical energy that’s been driving a lot of this for at least the last decade. Redo, reimagine, whatever you want to call it: We’ve reached the point where intellectual property is viewed as a renewable resource, to be mined into infinity. Because what’s the point of owning the copyright to back titles if those titles aren’t making new money? That’s how movie studios, TV networks and streaming platforms see it. Monetize everything that isn’t nailed down.

And none of it sounds appealing.

I can’t imagine screenwriters are happy about it either.

Let’s give Jennie Snyder Urman credit for her CBS reboot of “Matlock.” Starring Kathy Bates, it has nothing in common with the Andy Griffith original (which ran from 1986-1992) aside from the the genre (legal drama) and age range of the leads (Bates is actually a decade older than Griffith was when he made the show). Otherwise, they have no similarities.

My theory? Urman used the title as a Trojan horse to get her pitch greenlit at the network. But if it were called something like “Matty’s Law” instead, you wouldn’t know the difference — you wouldn’t think, “Huh, this feels like they just remade that show from the 80s.”

And to be fair, there are franchises that people do want to see continued. The original “Star Trek” was fueled by optimism and that has continued through a dozen live-action and animated series that have followed (not to mention a few movies). A friend recently expressed concerns about whether that will continue under the current David Ellis-run version of Paramount Global, which owns the rights.

Let me go back to Mark Twain, though, because his full quote is worth sitting with:

“There is no such thing as a new idea. It is impossible. We simply take a lot of old ideas and put them into a sort of mental kaleidoscope. We give them a turn and they make new and curious combinations. We keep on turning and making new combinations indefinitely; but they are the same old pieces of colored glass that have been in use through all the ages.”

What we’re missing is that kaleidoscope aspect, of new and curious combinations. It’s just the same old combinations, over and over again.

Let me contradict myself

HBO is midway through the third season of the showbiz satire “The Comeback.” But with so many years passing between seasons — the first came out in 2005, the second in 2014 — it is, essentially, a reboot of itself each time.

Very little right now (aside from “Hacks”) is as funny and perceptive about things like desperation, and whether it’s even possible to hold on to a semblance decency in Hollywood. But ultimately “The Comeback” has something to say with each outing. This time it’s about the destructive invasion of AI.

So, “The Comeback” makes a case for itself.

Could anything else? Sure. Probably.

2000’s “Almost Famous” was on TV the other day, about a budding teenage rock journalist in 1973 and the band he goes on tour with in the hopes of getting a story for Rolling Stone magazine. 

Rewatching the movie after all these years, I had a thought: Patrick Fugit’s sweet, wide-eyed reporter and Kate Hudson’s happy-go-lucky groupie are characters I’d be interested in catching up with decades later.

Specifically, what would Fugit’s character be doing now, when so much music criticism, let alone outlets that seriously cover pop culture, have disappeared? These journalism jobs barely exist anymore. Would he be bitter?

What kind of life would Hudson’s character have led? Did she remain a free spirit? Or did she settle down into a more uneventful  — even politically conservative — suburban existence, like so many of her Baby Boomer peers?

What if they met up for coffee to reconnect after so much time has passed? What if that conversation were the whole movie, something akin to Richard Linklater’s “Before Sunset,” his 2004 follow up to 1995’s “Before Midnight” — the rare sequel that actually makes a case for itself.

The characters in my theoretical “Almost Famous” sequel would be in their late 60s by now. The actors, though, are in their 40s and I’m not interested in seeing them slap on prosthetics to age them up. Could other, more age-appropriate actors step into those roles? Probably. Would that premise get greenlit? If Hudson isn’t part of the package, I don’t see it happening.

But at least it’s an idea with some meat on it. The characters were kids when they met. Now they’re adults who have lived entire lives and are staring down their final decade or two. What do they think about their youth in hindsight? What do they think about the music business as it exists today? What are their accomplishments? What are their regrets? What is it like to be reminded of a time that you’ll never get back?

That last one hits hard, because every time I watch something that’s 15 years old or more, I’m faced with the same question.