July 28, 2025, 3:01pm

A year ago, I walked into Hollywood with the following hand of brilliant ideas. While I thought my meeting with 20th Century Studios went well, I never heard back. I was disappointed, sure. But such is life in the fast lane.

Filming is currently underway for The Devil Wears Prada 2. And while leaked set photos suggest that my pitches were not taken seriously, today I share them with you, dear readers.

What follows is what might have been.

1. The Devil Wears Prada (2 Court). 

Miranda Priestly is finally retiring, but like a Pharaoh she plans to take Runway with her. The opening of this long-awaited sequel finds the Elias Clarke board inches from approving a merger that would place all its publications under the wing of a big bad mega-corp, Skydance-style.

Andy Sachs, still a broke journalist with a heart of gold, is investigating the anti-trust angle for The Nation (or similar). Signs point to shady dealings in the Priestly household that could place her former mentor under suspicion. But when Miranda offers Andy a cushy editorial position at her Airmail-ish vanity project, our favorite fashion victim must choose. To speak truth to power against monopolies, or coast out on an old media high?

2. The Devil Wears Whatever Camila Coelho Says 2.

After running a successful New York Mirror until it was destroyed by a private equity takeover in 2018, Andy’s been laid low. Divorced from her failed restauranteur husband but still supporting his food truck schemes with alimony, she’s been forced to make ends meet adjuncting at Columbia’s School of Journalism. There, in an intro class, she comes face to face with her ex-bosses’ daughters.

Miranda’s twins have grown up to be influencer party girls, with Oedipal designs on their mother’s brand and legacy. But one twin has Tina Brown’s vision, and the other has her list of enemies. Will Andy, in a mentee-to-mentor reversal, help the kids nurture their dreams to build a truly modern culture magazine to rival Runway? Or will old loyalties compel her to side with the dinosaurs?

3. The Devil Wears Prada 2 (In Which the Devil Also Wears Birkenstocks).

Surprise! The Devil, in this sequel, is Nate, Andy’s toxic ex-husband. (Sorry, I never liked Sad Eyed Chef!) When he and her best friend Lily went public with their decade-long affair, Andy wrote a much-beloved auto-fiction about the end of her marriage. Which caught the eye of Inevitable New Character (Ayo Edebiri?), a scrappy young editor at Runway who wants to suck fashion out of the focus.

When Andy’s hired to write a column for a new Runway vertical, she’s forced back into the Blahniks under the grudge-holding eye of her old boss. But this time power is a little more evenly distributed. This buddy comedy with teeth will play like Hacks, for magazine people. Miranda and Andy bond and bicker until it’s revealed that Inevitable New Character has a sneaky plan to overthrow the boss. At which point we get the old loyalty debate again. (Evergreen!)

4. The Devil Wears Prada 2: Anatomy of a Call.  

The Mentalist has been living in Paris, off the dwindling dregs of a book advance. After a come to Jesus moment by the banks of the Seine, he finally turns in a “novel” about the only thing that’s ever held his interest: power plays at Runway magazine. Unfortunately, the book is an airport best-seller. Also unfortunately, its contents are ripe for litigious action from Elias Clarke.

This kooky courtroom drama finds Andy Sachs—at start a perfectly happy publisher at a small university press—being sued by her former employer for apparent NDA violations. Expect meta-framing, and a lot of sleek, Paltrowian bench fits. Is Miranda the devil? Or is that the journalist?

5. The Devil Wears Prada 2: Back in the Habit.

The gang’s been scattered by the winds of time. Andy’s a staff writer at WaPo, but she keeps butting heads with her salty old editor, who loves to let democracy die in darkness. Emily now runs James Holt’s mega-brand. They also live together, in the Barry Diller/Diane von Furstenberg idiom. Nigel’s pivoted to a cushy television judge post, having spent half a decade cultivating a reputation as the cruelest judge on America’s Next Top Designer. Miranda’s hair hasn’t changed, but both twins are in jail. And ever since she signed that Harper’s letter without looking at it, people have been questioning the ice queen’s editorial judgments.

At Jacqueline Follet’s funeral, the fractured fellowship reunites. Don’t we miss the good old days, says someone. (Andy, duh.) Before page counts fell to paywalls? An idea’s floated. What if we build a new new media empire? So begins a scrappy come-up story, about older dogs learning new tricks to revitalize a dying print industry. But now that everyone’s supposedly wiser, will they replicate bad business patterns, or break new ground?

Anyway. I’m sure whatever The Devil Wears Prada 2 is actually about is fine, too. But we’ll have to wait till next May to know for sure.

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April 7, 2025, 2:15pm

You’ve probably already heard the news: Mr. Beast, the YouTuber your cousins are obsessed with, and James Patterson, the novelist your uncles are obsessed with, have finally teamed up to write a book together.

The thriller is Mr. Beast’s first book, but Patterson, the patron saint of airport bookstores, has long collaborated with big names. His third with Bill Clinton is due out in June and like so many books written pre-November, it’s arriving on shelves a little pre-curdled — this latest Patterson-Clinton joint has the winky title The First Gentleman.

Beast and Patterson’s book sold in “an eight-figure bidding war,” a fact that I don’t have the capacity to get frustrated with right now. The pair apparently really did co-write the novel — would love to be an “Anonymous Fly” on the wall of that Google doc.

Bogglingly, there’s also a non-fiction book attached to this deal. I imagine it will probably be a behind-the-scenes look at whatever is going on with Mr. Beast’s repeated attempts to do the Stanford Prison Experiment but monetized. But my hope is that it’s a craft book — I would read the hell out of Mr. Beast and James Patterson talking about how and why they do what they do.

The working title of this collab novel is The Most Dangerous Game, with the logline “Players fight to survive deadly tests held in dangerous locations around the world, as they battle to become ‘The One.’” Okay, but I think we can do better than that, so here are my pitches for the next Mr. Beast and James Patterson team-up.

Hungry For Crime

A detective is pulled into a twisted cat-and-mouse game with a notorious hitman known only as “Ice.” The detective must fight to save his family by racing to eat 100,000 calories faster than this deranged killer.

Southern Sun

A generous rich man gives away a private island to the FBI’s foremost forensic psychologist, who retires to turn his new tropical real estate into a luxury resort. But will it be enough to save his marriage?

Cold Case

A detective is asked to solve a series of kidnappings, but accidentally gets trapped in an old refrigerator for 24 hours. Hilarity and thrills ensue.

Bricked

A cash-strapped police department is forced to sell everything, and have to team up with a funny local teenager to build new polices cars out of Legos.

Basking

A mysterious lab creates five human-lizard hybrids, who have to make their way in a world that doesn’t understand them. Turned away from every job they try, they become YouTube content creators and soon are successful, famous, and happy.

20,000 Magnets Vs. 1 Serial Killer

A detective tries to stop a murderer using too many magnets.

Just One More

A series of high profile house fires shake the DC area, and it starts to become clear that this is the work of a serial arsonist. A local police detective is tasked with cracking the case, but must fight his addiction to watching YouTube videos long enough to catch the criminal.

Out of My Mitts

James Patterson co-writes a Utah thriller with Mitt Romney and four of the five Romney sons. But the night before the book’s release, Tagg discovers a horrible typo in the final copies. Tagg and the Patterson team put out a call: whoever can heist the most copies from airport bookstores across the globe will win a lifetime supply of delicious Mr. Beast brand breakfast cereal.

Ghost Hunt

Desperate ghostwriters compete under a series of increasingly tight deadlines to win a coveted position as co-writer with best-selling and very hunky writer Jim Batterson. Hilarity and thrills ensue.

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