Two decades after its release, Freaky Friday is getting a sequel. The 2003 Disney film saw Lindsay Lohan as 16-year-old Anna and Jamie Lee Curtis as her mom, Tess, accidentally switch bodies after eating magic fortune cookies.
In May 2023, the New York Times reported that Disney confirmed a sequel is in development. Curtis and Lohan are in talks to return, and Elyse Hollander wrote the screenplay.
However, production was halted during the writers and actors’ strikes last year. As of April 2024, the highly anticipated follow-up to the classic film might officially be underway. Ahead is everything we know about Freaky Friday 2.
Has a Freaky Friday sequel been confirmed?
In the above New York Times article, Lohan and Curtis spoke about Freaky Friday as they celebrated its 20 year anniversary.
“As I went around the world with Halloween Ends, people wanted to know if there was going to be another Freaky Friday. Something really touched a chord. When I came back, I called my friends at Disney and said, ‘It feels like there’s a movie to be made,’” Curtis recalled.
“Jamie and I are both open to that, so we’re leaving it in the hands that be,” Lohan added. “We would only make something that people would absolutely adore.”
One year later, in March 2024, Lohan confirmed Freaky Friday 2 on SiriusXM’s Andy Cohen Live after she was asked if a sequel is in the works, to which she confidently replied, “It is.”
“I don’t want to say too much…We’re both excited! I’m gonna speak for Jamie,” she added.
Then, on Friday, March 29, Curtis made the announcement for herself. She posted a selfie of her and Lohan to her Instagram, writing in the caption, “DUH! FFDEUX!”
The next day, she shared a throwback photo of the two of them from the movie, the moment that their characters discovered that they swapped bodies.
Who will be in the cast?
Curtis and Lohan will be reprising their mother/daughter roles as Anna and Tess Coleman. As of now, any other cast members have yet to be revealed.
However, in a September 2023 interview with Cosmopolitan, Andrew Gunn, the producer of Freaky Friday, spoke about the possibility of Anna’s band, Pink Slip, reuniting for the spinoff.
“We got a draft of a script for the sequel right before the writers’ strike, and it was really good,” he admitted. “A writer came up with the most brilliant idea. It uses music and the band in a great way.”
What is the plot of Freaky Friday 2?
A few hours after Curtis posted the news to her Instagram, Nisha Ganatra, director of the movie Late Night, was announced to direct the reboot, per The Hollywood Reporter.
As reported by Entertainment Weekly, Ganatra posted an open casting call to her Instagram Story on April 1, only three days after Curtis’ post. They are looking to fill the role of Harper, Anna’s 14-year-old daughter, who is described as “a teen surfer with California vibes with a sharp sense of humor. Harper is in a bit of mood these days because her longtime single mom is set to marry British restaurateur Eric Davies.”
They also added that Harper “would like to see things go her way and use her intelligence to stop this marriage from ever happening,”
According to the audition description, and eight pages of script that were included, Eric also has a 14-year-old daughter, Lily, who does not get along with Harper.
In the planned plot for Freaky Friday 2, Anna and Tess do switch bodies, but not with each other, like in the original film. In the sequel, which is set to take place 20 years later, they each swap places with two teenage girls. You guessed it: Harper and Lily. Per EW, “Harper should channel ‘Anna’ (Lindsay Lohan) and Lily should channel ‘Tess’ (Jamie Lee Curtis).”
In the audition packet, there was reportedly a scene where Harper and Lily, who are really Anna and Tess in the teen girls’ bodies, are sitting together in the kitchen and reminiscing on their youth while drinking apple juice out of wine glasses. In another scene, Harper and Lily (actually Anna and Tess) are cleaning up the beach as a punishment for detention, when Tess opens up about her feelings towards Anna moving to London with her future husband.
Stay tuned for more updates.