Credit: Inside the MagicFreaky Friday 2 is finally happening, and Jamie Lee Curtis and Lindsay Lohan are back for the sequel. While it may have been over 20 years since the first movie, the older actress says that all it actually took was her making a phone call to Disney CEO Bob Iger.
The Freaky Friday franchise is one of the stranger and more long-lived pieces of IP in the The Walt Disney Company catalog. The series originated with the 1972 novel of the same title by Mary Rodgers, which followed the mother-daughter duo of Ellen and Annabel Andrews during a very strange day in which they switch bodies and gain empathy for the struggles of their respective lives.
It was first adapted into a film in 1976, starring Jodie Foster and Barbara Harris; it was a box office success and was nominated for three Golden Globes.
Since then, the franchise has included two sequels, Summer Switch (1984) and A Billion for Boris (1985), a Wonderful World of Disney ABC TV adaptation starring Shelley Long and Gaby Hoffmann in 1995, the 2003 adaptation starring Jamie Lee Curtis and Lindsay Lohan, a 2016 stage musical by Tom Kitt, Brian Yorkey, and Bridget Carpenter, which itself was adapted as a Disney Channel Original Movie in 2018, and now, at long last: Freaky Friday 2.
Related: Lindsay Lohan Officially Returns to ‘Mean Girls’
For a story with a very specific and peculiar central conceit, Freaky Friday clearly has made a deep impression on pop culture. In some ways, it was an inevitability for a sequel to the 2003 version to get made, but it still seems to have taken a long time.
According to a new interview with Screen Rant from the recent San Diego Comic-Con, Jamie Lee Curtis seems to think that her personal relationship with Bob Iger is what it took.
Jamie Lee Curtis said, “The reason for Freaky Friday is because of stuff like this. During the Halloween press junkets all around the world, we would do Halloween questions and then every single interview, they’d go, “So what’s up with you and Lindsay? Are you going to get back?” Because of that real interest around the world, when I got back home, I called Bob Iger.”
Curtis has recently received some backlash for her harsh criticism of the cultural discussion of “nepo baby” privilege in Hollywood, calling it “designed to try to diminish and denigrate and hurt” and that she was part of a glorious group of people with rich and famous parents who are “Proud of our lineage.
Strong in our belief in our right to exist.” It might not help her case about nepo babies that she can apparently call up the CEO of Disney on a whim.
Related: Former Disney Star Lindsay Lohan Threatened With Lawsuit Over Failed Sitcom
Curtis continued regarding the call, saying, “I said, ‘Bob, I’m telling you, people want it.’ That’s how it began. That was about a year and a half ago, and we have been shooting now for two months. It’s awesome. It’s different and beautiful and fun and funny. It hits every note. It’s going to be amazing.”
Freaky Friday 2 is scheduled to be in theaters in 2025 and will co-star Mark Harmon, Chad Michael Murray, Christina Vidal Mitchell, Haley Hudson, Stephen Tobolowsky, Lucille Soong, Rosalind Chao, Julia Butters, and Manny Jacinto. It is currently unknown how many of those actors called Bob Iger regarding the sequel.
How many Freaky Friday movies have you watched?