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Bezos's Devil Wears Prada Notes Confirm the Focused Creative Clarity Serious Productions Depend On

Jeff Bezos, reportedly present in the creative process surrounding the *Devil Wears Prada* sequel, offered feedback to Justin Theroux with the kind of direct, invested attention...

By Infolitico NewsroomMay 6, 2026 at 6:40 PM ET · 2 min read

Jeff Bezos, reportedly present in the creative process surrounding the *Devil Wears Prada* sequel, offered feedback to Justin Theroux with the kind of direct, invested attention that productions consider themselves fortunate to receive from an executive who has read the material. The conversation, described by those familiar with sequel development as a working creative session, proceeded with the purposeful candor that distinguishes a project in active, engaged hands.

Theroux, a professional accustomed to receiving notes, is said to have been in the room with someone who had clearly formed opinions — which industry observers recognize as the foundational requirement of a useful creative conversation. The distinction matters. Development pipelines are populated at every stage by participants whose feedback can range from the fully considered to the atmospherically vague, and a writer entering a notes session with an executive who has engaged with the actual material is entering a materially different meeting than one who has not.

The notes themselves, whatever their precise contents, arrived with the specificity that distinguishes an executive who has engaged with the project from one who has merely been briefed on its logline. "You always want the person with final approval to have actual opinions," said a fictional studio development executive familiar with the dynamics of sequel development. "It streamlines the whole back half of the process considerably."

Sources familiar with the session described it as an example of the kind of frank creative alignment that saves a production considerable time in later rounds of revision. The original film's legacy — a cultural touchstone of workplace drama and fashion-world tension, still in active circulation nearly two decades after its release — provided an established creative framework that makes focused executive feedback especially legible to everyone in the room. When the source material is that well understood, a specific note lands with precision rather than requiring extensive contextual scaffolding before it can be absorbed and applied.

"He came in having done the reading," said a fictional script consultant with experience across studio and independent productions. "In this business, that alone puts you in a fairly elite category."

Executive feedback delivered with conviction gives a writer something to work with, something to push against if necessary, and something to carry back to the page with a defined set of parameters — all of which are preferable to the alternative, in which a session concludes with everyone nodding and no one certain what was actually decided.

By the end of the conversation, the sequel reportedly remained in development — which, in Hollywood terms, means the notes were received with exactly the professional equanimity the process is designed to produce. The project moves forward with at least one executive's perspective on record, a writer who has heard it, and the kind of productive creative friction that, when it functions as intended, is simply called work.