Back in 2003, “Freaky Friday” hit theaters and became a certified Disney hit. Now, its sequel “Freakier Friday” is here and, perhaps to the surprise of some, is also in theaters. But making sure it ended up on the big screen was important to director Nisha Ganatra.
“Freaky Friday” grossed more than $160 million worldwide against a budget of $26 million. One might think that made a sequel inevitable but, in reality, it was “never” part of the plan, according to director Mark Waters. As the years went on though, Jamie Lee Curtis kept getting asked about one.
So, when she realized on the “Halloween Ends” press run that Lindsay Lohan had reached the age where she could believably have her own teenage daughter, Curtis called Disney CEO Bob Iger directly. From there the project snowballed, eventually coming to Ganatra.
She was thrilled, and when she was tapped to direct she immediately wanted to make it bigger.
“This one was really about ‘How do I make this as visual as possible, and a lot more worthy of the big screen?’” Ganatra explained to TheWrap. “Because I really wanted audiences to go together to the big screen and watch it.”
It wasn’t a given, considering Disney’s two biggest legacy sequels up to this point — “Hocus Pocus 2” and “Disenchanted,” both released in 2022 — went straight to Disney+. And indeed, Ganatra remembers being told originally that “Freakier Friday” would be a streaming release, too.
“But I immediately ignored that, and always thought of it as a big screen movie,” she said with a laugh. “Because you can’t, like — all our filmmaker dreams are big movie theaters, people in there packed together, having a communal experience. So I think it was just always, the DP and I were always shooting for the big screen.”
Still, Ganatra and her team had to make their case, and present their plan to the studio. Fortunately, they were successful, and the decision to go theatrical was made before “Freakier Friday” started shooting.
Opening up the setting
A key piece of the presentation was the visuals. “Freakier Friday” takes place entirely in Los Angeles, and it’s actually Los Angeles. Ganatra admitted she “got a little bit insane” about showing real parts of the city once the film obtained the LA tax credit.
According to the director, “Freakier Friday” was originally more interior, largely taking place just at home and at school; Ganatra instead wanted to “lean into the cultural advantages LA has.”
“Anyone who lives in Los Angeles might question whether you can get from downtown to the Palisades on a Bird scooter, but, you know, poetic license! It’s fine.” Ganatra said with a laugh. (Note: We checked and you actually can! It’d take you a few hours, but it’s possible, should you feel determined).
From there, she and her team started inserting all of their personal favorite spots, like the Echo Park neighborhood or Café Tropical in nearby Silver Lake, as a love letter to LA.
“It’s one of the most beautiful cities in the world,” Ganatra said. “It has a mountain range running right through it! And people forget that when they film in LA, and I don’t know why. It’s just not given its due in a beautiful photographic sense sometimes.”
That said, the decision to spread the story out geographically also came in part from Ganatra’s indie film roots.
“Usually we didn’t have enough lights to film inside. So I would always try to pull things outside anyway, because we just had to move faster,” she explained. “So it was a good exercise for me.”
The Story
Of course, for Jamie Lee Curtis and Lindsay Lohan to return for a sequel to one of the biggest films in each of their careers, it came down to more than just location. The heart — and funny bone — of the sequel had to be in the right place.
So, Curtis was one of the first people Ganatra met with before getting the job, at Curtis’s Palisades home. She explained to Ganatra what she felt worked in the first film, and voiced one worry.
“She was concerned that there weren’t enough big, comedic set pieces. So she actually came up with a pickleball scene,” Ganatra said. “And then she came up with the lip pumper. Jamie has really amazing, strong views on the cosmetic industry, and so she really wanted the takedown and putting all that in there.”
Ironically, Ganatra herself was never worried about the comedy element, and she told Curtis as much.
“I was more feeling like the movie needed a bigger message than it currently had,” Ganatra explained. “The first one was so successful because it talked about walking mile in each other’s shoes. And we didn’t want to repeat that message in this one, but you kind of have to, because of the body swap.”
“But it wasn’t about walking in each other’s shoes. She says it so beautifully at the end, when she says, ‘I was afraid of sharing someone I love.’ That is, I think, the big beautiful thing.”
Curtis called Lohan during that meeting at her home (Lohan herself lives in Dubai these days), and according to Ganatra, their natural dynamic was immediately visible, as was the reason it works.
“[Lindsay] has, how would I call it, a long application period to get in, you know?” she explained. “She’s definitely more guarded, I think Jamie kind of runs into the world heart open, just dives in. And Lindsay can be a little more cautious, a little more introverted, and I think it’s why they’re so good on screen together, because their energies complement each other.”
They loved each other and drove each other crazy, and the latter was something Ganatra knew she needed to mind.
“I think what I realized in that moment was, don’t forget the drive each other crazy part,” Ganatra said. “Because that is something I think movies I adore, like ‘Terms of Endearment,’ and even when I saw ‘Postcards From the Edge,’ there’s just movies where the mother-daughter relationship is so done right, that it doesn’t shy away from the ugly side as well.”
Generational Divide
It may seem odd to see those films listed as inspirations for “Freakier Friday,” but they’re really just a few that played influential parts, that Gen Z-ers in the audience wouldn’t recognize.
In an early sequence in the film, during a food fight at the school, one student straight up smears blue frosting down her face as a nod to “Braveheart” (according to Ganatra, part of that scene got cut, and the actress even yells “For Fashion!”). “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” was also a “true north” for the director, and they directly re-created the joyride for the film.
“I was kind of shocked, I have to say,” Ganatra admitted. “I did not expect for that to be even allowed for us to film, or much less to end up in the final movie. But it’s such a callback of joy for all of us who love that movie, and also to pay homage to it, because it did inform so many choices on this one.”
Equally shocking for the director was being allowed to use “(I’ve Had) The Time of My Life” to have Lohan and Manny Jacinto re-create a “Dirty Dancing” moment. Of course, because Lohan is actually playing her daughter at that point in the film, the scene sees Anna literally run out the door when told to run and jump into Jacinto’s arms.
“I actually put that in as just a placeholder, this ‘Dirty Dancing’ joke, and I was like, ‘No one’s going to let me shoot that. They’re not going to buy that song and do all this stuff,’” Ganatra recalled. “And it was more just a funny Gen Z thing that I thought, ‘She won’t know this movie, so she doesn’t know what they’re talking about when they say run, but we all do.’”
According to the director, Lohan was more than game for the bit — as were her co-stars on all the others — and regularly reminded Ganatra of her love for Lucille Ball and physical comedy.
Beyond having very specific films influences, Ganatra just embraced the “joyful” mood on set every single day.
“To me, it was important to create almost like an improv troop energy, where everyone from any department, behind the camera and anyone on set, no matter what level they were, or number they were on the call sheet, felt comfortable pitching, and that way it was just fun,” she said.
“Freakier Friday” is now in theaters everywhere.