THUN, Switzerland (AP) — Swiss soccer finally got its surprise champion Sunday in unheralded Thun, sealing a title to compare with Leicester’s long-shot Premier League win in 2016.
Thun clinched a first Swiss league title in the club’s 128-year history — despite losing games on the past two Saturdays — when second-place St. Gallen dropped points in a 3-0 loss hosting Sion.
That left Thun, coached by former star forward Mauro Lustrinelli, 11 points clear with three rounds to go.
The title came in Thun’s first season back in the top tier after five years in the second division. The team from a central Switzerland town of 45,000 people also never won a Swiss Cup title.
The final step was a nervous one for Thun when victory in either of its past two games would have confirmed the title. A 3-1 loss Saturday at defending champion Basel, ending with nine players after two red cards, followed a 1-0 loss at home to Lugano one week earlier.
Lustrinelli and his squad were at the team's stadium Sunday afternoon to watch a broadcast of the St. Gallen game and were joined by thousands of fans for the celebration that followed.
Thun has a long path to competing with Europe's elite in the next Champions League, where the club made an unlikely appearance in 2005 after being runner-up in the Swiss league.
The champion of Switzerland now enters the second qualifying round of the Champions League in July — starting two days after the World Cup final. Thun needs to beat three opponents to advance to the main phase.
Thun is unlikely to have any player selected for a World Cup squad though 20-year-old midfielder Ethan Meichtry is a Switzerland Under-21 international with a bright future.
AP soccer: https://apnews.com/hub/soccer
Thun's Kastriot Imeri lifts a dummy trophy to celebrate the championship title in Thun, Switzerland, Sunday, May 3, 2026. (Alessandro della Valle/Keystone via AP)
Thun's Vasilije Janjicic, right, and Leonardo Bertone, lift a dummy trophy to celebrate the championship title in Thun, Switzerland, Sunday, May 3, 2026. (Alessandro della Valle/Keystone via AP)
Thun head coach Mauro Lustrinelli, centre, assistant coach Nelson Ferreira, left, and sporting director Dominik Albrecht, right, celebrate the championship title in Thun, Switzerland, Sunday, May 3, 2026. (Alessandro della Valle/Keystone via AP)
Twenty years after the original, the sequel to “The Devil Wears Prada” made a splash in its first weekend in theaters. Driven largely by women, “The Devil Wears Prada 2” earned $77 million in the U.S. and Canada, and $156.6 million internationally, according to studio estimates Sunday. It easily topped the box office and bumped “Michael” to second place, though the musical biopic held well in its second weekend, falling only 44%.
The Walt Disney Co.’s 20th Century Studios opened “The Devil Wears Prada 2” in 4,150 locations in North America. Women made up about 76% of the ticket buyers, according to PostTrak exit polls; 74% said they would “definitely recommend” the movie to friends. Critics were a bit mixed on the sequel, which finds Anne Hathaway’s Andy Sachs working once more for Meryl Streep’s Miranda Priestly at the fictional “Runway” magazine in a much-depleted media landscape.
The movie cost a reported $100 million to produce — a significant boost from the first movie’s $35 million production budget. But as filmmaker David Frankel told The Associated Press recently, “As it turns out, you know, by the time you finish paying all the biggest movie stars in the world, you still end up with basically the same budget for making the movie as we did the first one.”
Stars Streep, Hathaway, Emily Blunt and Stanley Tucci have been on a fashion-forward global publicity blitz for weeks, with glamorous stops in Tokyo, London and New York. Even Anna Wintour, the inspiration for the Prada-clad devil, has been involved this time, appearing with Hathaway on the Oscars stage and with Streep on the cover of “Vogue.”
The first movie opened in June 2006 and would go on to earn over $326 million worldwide, not adjusted for inflation. And perhaps more importantly, it firmly became part of the culture thanks in part to its ever-quotable likes (“gird your loins,” “groundbreaking,” “that’s all”). Legacy sequels are never a sure thing, but this time anticipation was high: According to Nielsen, streaming viewership for “The Devil Wears Prada” was up 428% from March 2026 to April 2026.
Second place went to Lionsgate’s Michael Jackson biopic “Michael,” which made $54 million in its second weekend in North America, where it’s playing on 3,955 screens. Its running worldwide total is already $423.9 million. Universal Pictures is handling the international release.
“This is on the great end of what we had speculated might happen, but we were very confident that we were going to have a great hold even with the assumption that ‘Prada’ would do a lot of business,” said Lionsgate chairman Adam Fogelson. “The conventional wisdom that a new giant movie can knock out a movie that has planted itself is constantly proven inaccurate.”
This weekend marks the start of Hollywood’s summer movie season, a crucial 18-week corridor that runs through Labor Day and often accounts for around 40% of the annual box office. There are often Marvel blockbusters programmed as the season's kickoff, but the combined power of “The Devil Wears Prada 2” and “Michael” wasn't a shabby substitute.
“This is a really solid weekend,” said Paul Dergarabedian, the head of marketplace trends for Comscore. “It’s this irresistible combination that more than makes up for the fact that there’s not a Marvel movie to kick off the summer movie season.”
“Prada” alone actually did better business than last year’s summer kickoff Marvel movie, “Thunderbolts.” There were several other new films in theaters this weekend as well, including the Adam Scott-led horror movie “Hokum,” Andy Serkis’s animated adaptation of “Animal Farm” and the Aaron Eckhart- and Ben Kingsley-led survival movie “Deep Water.”
They all opened behind “The Super Mario Galaxy Movie,” which made $12.1 million in its fifth weekend, and “Project Hail Mary,” which made $8.6 million in its seventh weekend. Neon's “Hokum” led the newcomers with $6.4 million, rounding out the top five, followed by the very poorly reviewed “Animal Farm” with $3.4 million. “Deep Water” opened to $2.2 million.
In the top four movies, Dergarabedian has noticed a trend: “Over the past couple of months, moviegoers have really embraced pure, escapist entertainment,” he said.
The annual box office is currently running about 14% up from last year, with about $2.8 billion in domestic ticket sales to date.
With final domestic figures being released Monday, this list factors in the estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Comscore:
1. “The Devil Wears Prada 2,” $77 million.
2. “Michael,” $54 million.
3. “The Super Mario Galaxy Movie,” $12.1 million.
4. “Project Hail Mary,” $8.6 million.
5. “Hokum,” $6.4 million.
6. “Animal Farm,” $3.4 million.
7. “Lee Cronin’s The Mummy,” $2.2 million.
8. “Deep Water,” $2.2 million.
9. “That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime the Movie: Tears of the Azure Sea,” $1 million.
10. “The Drama,” $908,303.
Meryl Streep, from left, Emily Blunt, Stanley Tucci, and Anne Hathaway attend "The Devil Wears Prada 2" world premiere at David Geffen Hall on Monday, April 20, 2026, in New York. (Photo by Evan Agostini/Invision/AP)
Meryl Streep, from left, Anne Hathaway, Stanley Tucci, and Emily Blunt pose for photographers upon arrival at the premiere of the film 'The Devil Wears Prada 2' on Wednesday, April 22, 2026, in London. (Photo by Scott A Garfitt/Invision/AP)
