Jamie Lee Curtis called up executives at Disney to fight against the decision to release Freakier Friday on their streaming service.
The Halloween actress, who starred alongside Lindsay Lohan in the 2003 body-swap comedy, spearheaded the upcoming sequel, in which she and Lohan reunite on-screen after more than 20 years.
As the project came together, Curtis learned that Disney bosses were planning to release Freakier Friday straight on Disney+, so she made a few phone calls and campaigned them to open the comedy in cinemas.
Revealing how she assured them of its theatrical success, Curtis told The Guardian, "I called (Disney CEO) Bob Iger and I called David Greenbaum (Disney Live Action president), and I called Asad Ayaz, who's the head of marketing, and I said: 'Guys, I have one word for you: Barbie. If you don't think the audience that saw Barbie is going to be the audience that goes and sees Freakier Friday, you're wrong.'"
Barbie, inspired by the Mattel toy doll of the same name, was the highest-grossing movie of 2023.
The Oscar-winning actress was instrumental in putting Freakier Friday together in the first place. While on the 2022 press tour for her movie Halloween Ends, she kept being asked about a sequel and realised that there was major interest in a follow-up.
When she returned home from the publicity tour, the Everything Everywhere All At Once actress called Iger and got the ball rolling.
"I said: 'Look, I don't know if you're planning on doing (a sequel), but Lindsay is old enough to have a teenager now, and I'm telling you the market for that movie exists,'" the 66-year-old recalled.
In the sequel, Curtis and Lohan reprise their roles as mother-daughter duo Tess and Anna Coleman, who become involved in a four-way body-swap with Anna's daughter Harper and stepdaughter Lily.
The film will be released in cinemas on 8 August.
