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The 2003 hit Freaky Friday is set for a highly anticipated comeback, after Disney confirmed work was underway for a sequel expected to reunite Jamie Lee Curtis and Lindsay Lohan as the iconic mother-daughter pair they played 20 years ago.
That was in fact the third time Mary Rodgers’ 1972 novel about a sparring mother and daughter who switch bodies had been filmed. The first, in 1976, starred Barbara Harris as the mother and a young Jodie Foster as the daughter. The second, a 1995 telemovie, starred Shelley Long in the older role and Transparent’s Gaby Hoffman in the younger.
Tess Coleman (Jamie Lee Curtis, left) and her daughter, Anna (Lindsay Lohan, right) in Disney’s 2003 hit, Freaky Friday.Credit: AP/Ron Batzdorff
But for many millennials and Gen Zs, it is the 2003 version, with Curtis as Tess and Lohan as Anna, that is definitive. And it is likely for those fans – who would belt out Ultimate alongside Lohan, and mimick her teenage angst in the hope they too would bag a hunk like Chad Michael Murray – that a belated sequel is reportedly underway.
Though little is yet known about the storyline or when it is expected to hit screens, Curtis and Lohan are both expected to reprise their roles in some form, with writer and producer Elyse Hollander to pen the screenplay.
The 2003 film – directed by Mark Waters and written by Leslie Dixon and Heather Hach – took over $237 million at the global office, according to The Numbers. That was around $53 million more than Legally Blonde 2: Red, White & Blonde and around $156 million more than The Lizzie McGuire Movie, two other teen comedies also released that year.
Oscar winner Curtis told The New York Times she had been continuously questioned about a possible sequel when promoting her horror film Halloween Ends last year.
“Something really touched a chord,” she said in Times’ retrospective celebrating the film’s 20th anniversary. “When I came back, I called my friends at Disney and said, ‘It feels like there’s a movie to be made’.”
Curtis teased the sequel’s production at the Los Angeles premiere for Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery last November, and again at the Producers Guild Awards at the beginning of the year.
Freaky Friday nostalgia reached fever pitch in February when Curtis shared a photo of herself and Lohan on Instagram, captioned: “It’s Friday. I’m just sayin! Freaky fingers crossed!”
Curtis, 64, is arguably the best promotional tool a Freaky Friday return could hope for. The daughter of Hollywood royalty Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh, she has been a beloved household name since making her film debut in John Carpenter’s classic slasher Halloween in 1978. In March, she collected the best supporting actress Oscar for A24’s Everything, Everywhere, All At Once.
Lohan has long been a screen star, too, but her place in the firmament has been rather less constant.
As a child actress, she stole hearts in The Parent Trap and became a 2000s megastar thanks to the eminently quotable Mean Girls. But substance abuse and legal issues, along with a reputation for unreliability on set, derailed her career for many years.
Now 36 and expecting her first child, she has been working on something of a comeback, landing reality TV and stage roles, securing a multi-picture deal with Netflix, and starring in the platform’s festive rom-com Falling for Christmas late last year – her first major studio role in more than a decade.
A Freaky reboot could be the icing on the cake for a resurgent Lohan, who also shared her enthusiasm for such a project with The New York Times, saying both she and Curtis were open to it and were “leaving it in the hands that be”.
“We would only make something that people would absolutely adore,” she added.
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