This week, the first sequel to 2003’s Freaky Friday opens in theaters.
This week, the fifth movie based on the book Freaky Friday opens in theaters.
This week, the seventh movie based on the Freaky Friday book series opens in theaters.
Perhaps it’s only appropriate, given the name of the franchise, but somehow all of these things are simultaneously true.
Mary Rodgers’ 1972 children’s book Freaky Friday has turned into quite the ongoing source material for Hollywood – and particularly for Disney – yet it’s funny how often only the first book has been focused on, even as Rodgers herself offered up a very different road map for where to go in follow-ups. With Freakier Friday reuniting Jamie Lee Curtis and Lindsay Lohan in a sequel to the third adaptation of the novel, let’s take a look back at the freaky and surprisingly convoluted history of Freaky Friday.
The Original Freaky Friday Book Trilogy
The original Freaky Friday introduces mother and daughter duo Ellen and Annabel and establishes their strange day as they find themselves swapped into each other’s body. But unlike any of the adaptations, we stick with Annabel (who narrates the book) for the entirety of the story, only learning what her mom was up to while inside her daughter’s body at the end, as Annabel does. On top of that, we don’t know the specifics of why this occurred, except being told that somehow Ellen was responsible. Ultimately, it’s pretty inconsequential to know how though, since this original version is more of a cute but relatively simple tale for kids in which our teenage protagonist comes to better understand her mom by literally walking in her shoes for a day.
The book was a success, and just two years later, Rodgers released a sequel, which is when things get weird. Well, weird in a different way than a body swap, since that’s plenty weird on its own. 1974’s A Billion for Boris goes in a radically different direction, as Annabel’s little brother, Ben, gets an old TV set that turns out to magically show him the next day’s television programming. When Annabel and her pseudo-boyfriend Boris (a character also first introduced in Freaky Friday) discover what the TV does, Boris quickly has thoughts of pulling a Biff Tannen and using the information the TV gives them about who will win sporting events to become rich. Eventually though, things get out of hand, before more valuable life lessons are learned, as others begin to see what’s on the TV, leading to a major robbery taking place thanks to the criminals’ knowledge about an impending blackout.
Obviously, this is quite a departure from a body swap movie, instead giving the same characters a totally new magical dilemma to deal with, which once more isn’t given a full explanation for how or why it’s occurring - though Annabel continually mentions it as “ESP” of some sort (A Billion for Boris was renamed ESP TV in some editions). But given these unexplainable, fantastic things keep happening around Annabal, maybe she’s just a straight-up witch or something, and doesn’t realize it? Hey, it could be hereditary! Her mom did somehow cause a body switch after all.
Though there aren’t 1974 message boards we can look back on to check, it feels like the audience response to A Billion for Boris might have been more muted compared to the first book, because it’s worth noting that when Rodgers finally delivered a third installment of her signature book series, eight years later, she went back to basics. In contrast to the far more bold A Billion to Boris, 1982’s Summer Switch delivers a more standard sequel, returning to a body switch story. The big variation here was “now it’s the guys in the family,” with little brother Ben and family patriarch Bill the ones swapping places. It feels like Rodgers probably was greatly influenced by the approach she herself took with the screenplay for the 1976 movie (more on that below), because this time, we actually follow both characters for the entirety of the story, with the father and son alternating who narrates each chapter.
Oh, and “fun” (which is to say, odd) fact: Summer Switch makes a pretty wild move for a kids book (and I remember it certainly felt surprising reading it as a kid) by having the body swap take place while Bill, the dad, is standing at a urinal peeing. The narration makes it clear that young Ben is amazed at, um, what he’s seeing compared to what he’s used to seeing while peeing, with an all caps, triple exclamation of Ben’s thoughts reading “OH WOW!!!”
It’s also worth noting that it’s Ben randomly wishing he could be his dad that is the inciting incident for the body swap. Which once more has me suspecting that, in the books at least, maybe this is a whole freaky family of witches.
(Also worth noting: Before she passed away in 2014, Mary Rodgers co-wrote 2009’s Freaky Monday, which could be described as a spiritual sequel to Freaky Friday, given it’s another body switch story, this time about a teenage girl and her teacher. But since it has no overt ties to Freaky Friday beyond the concept, we’ll assume it’s not meant to officially be part of the same franchise… until the day someone says it is).
The Many Freaky Movie Adaptations
As mentioned above, the initial success of Freaky Friday brought about a pretty quick movie adaptation by Disney, with Rodgers herself being asked to write the screenplay. Whether it was her own thoughts on how to shake things up, a request by Disney, or a bit of both, she used the opportunity to actually follow Ellen’s journey too this time, something that would become the standard going forward. And, of course, the movie stands out for starring Jodie Foster as Annabel (alongside Barbara Harris as Ellen), in the midst of Foster having a rather insane breakout year in 1976 that included six movies in total, one of which was her Academy Award-nominated role in Taxi Driver. While we’re still left to ponder the cosmic reasonings for why it happened (though the movie explicitly takes place on Friday the 13th, for what it’s worth), the body swap here occurs when mother and daughter both simultaneously wish to trade places with each other, not realizing it will actually happen.
Though Freaky Friday 1976 was a hit, and would be shown on TV a ton for many years to come – which is where I and many other ’80s and ’90s kids first saw it – Disney didn’t directly do anything with the title for nearly 20 years. Then, in 1995, they produced their first remake of Freaky Friday, this time as a TV movie that debuted on ABC’s The Wonderful World of Disney. This version starred Shelley Long as Ellen and Gaby Hoffmann as the differently spelled “Annabelle” and was the first Freaky Friday to make Ellen a single mom involved in a new romance, an element that has stuck around through every subsequent version. It was also the first version to provide a specific outside force as the reason for their body switch, via a pair of magical amulets. For whatever reason, this is the only version of Freaky Friday currently not available to stream on Disney+, nor can you legally stream it, rent it, or buy it digitally anywhere. Though rumor has it, you might find it on a Tube called You…
Then, just eight years later, Disney made yet another Freaky Friday remake, this time returning the title to theaters for a high-profile film starring a longtime movie star, Jamie Lee Curtis, and a young actress who’d already found success in another Disney remake - The Parent Trap’s Lindsay Lohan. This was the first version to have an outside person cause the body swap, as Lucille Soong’s character gives the renamed mom, Tess, and her daughter, now shortened to Anna, fortune cookies she knows will cause them to switch places when they read their fortunes aloud. Curtis and Lohan proved to be a winning combo in a movie that did a solid job modernizing the story, and Freaky Friday 2003 was both well reviewed and a big hit, bringing in over $160 million on a $26 million budget.
Despite how well it did, Disney still didn’t deem their third go at Freaky Friday worthy of a sequel (well, not yet at least), but the continued strength of the title led them to turn Freaky Friday into a stage musical in 2016, which in turn got its own movie version in 2018 - bringing us up to Freaky Friday’s fourth movie incarnation. Once more, the title returned to television for the 2018 version, which debuted on Disney Channel. Freaky Friday 2018 also ported over some fairly big changes from the source material in the stage version, starting with the mother and daughter now given yet another name overhaul to Katherine (Heidi Blickenstaff) and Ellie (Cozi Zuehlsdorff). Was it an odd choice to give the daughter a name so similar to Ellen, the original name of the mom in earlier versions of the story? It sure was! Oh, and the cause of the body swap this time out? A magical hourglass.
The Mostly Forgotten Non-Disney Sequels
Freaky Friday has now been made four times by Disney, and they’re finally doing a sequel to the third version 22 years after that movie came out, but obviously 2025’s Freakier Friday is not in any way based upon A Billion for Boris or Summer Switch. So what happened to those two book follow-ups as far as Hollywood doing their thing with them?
It seems, as was often the case back then (when studios weren’t thinking as far ahead with franchises and IP building) that the three Freaky Friday books were all optioned separately, with Disney not being directly involved in the production of the screen adaptations of either book sequel… But yes, they did get adapted. And notably, they both received their adaptations in the same year too, 1984, yet in totally unrelated productions, despite their shared history and shared characters.
That means in 1984, there were completely separate live-action projects featuring the entire Andrews family – Annabel, Ellen, Bill, Ben – with A Billion for Boris getting its own low budget theatrical release and Summer Switch getting a hasty adaptation as a 46-minute Afterschool Special. For those who loved the books, it was a veritable Multiverse of Freaky!
Neither of these adaptations are all that good, though A Billion for Boris stands out for marking the onscreen debut of Seth Green, who plays little brother Ben, AKA Ape-Face (his big sister’s not-so affectionate nickname). What’s also notable about A Billion for Boris is it’s the last time the character Boris would be included in any screen version of Mary Rodgers’ Freaky Friday universe, despite once being deemed important enough by Rodgers herself to be the only one from the books to become a genuine title character. Though you can find some very faint traces of him in characters like the 2003 Freaky Friday’s Jake, Boris himself has remained sadly sidelined, except for the 2003 version sneaking in an Easter egg cameo by Marc McClure (best known as Jimmy Olsen in the Christopher Reeve Superman movies), who had played Boris in the 1976 movie. McClure’s delivery guy in the 2003 movie is in fact also named Boris, but he’s sadly lacking in a magic TV and he’s way too old to be Anna’s classmate, much less her love interest.
Even if the screen rights to A Billion for Boris or Summer Switch were now available, it seems unlikely Disney would be interested in them, since they have their own very different path for this story going with Freakier Friday. Then again, who knows, maybe they go back to directly adapting Freaky Friday itself next for a fifth time. And maybe this time it’s a planned trilogy from the start, with the characters and events of A Billion for Boris and Summer Switch meticulously set up and mapped out for future installments!
Okay, probably not. But perhaps somewhere in the vast Freakyverse that’s exactly what’s happening right now…
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