Angourie Rice plays the naïve new student Cady Heron who tries to fit in with the popular Plastics clique in the final trailer for Mean Girls, which hits theaters on Jan. 12.
Cady navigates the elite girls club led by the conniving queen bee Regina George (Reneé Rapp) and her minions Gretchen (Bebe Wood) and Karen (Avantika Vandanapu) after moving from Kenya to a Chicago suburb and struggling to survive her new high school jungle.
That challenge only grows when Cady falls foul of Regina when she gains the attention of her ex-boyfriend Aaron Samuels, played by Christopher Briney, with whom she soon has a serious crush. “We as women have to support each other,” Tina Fey says at one point in the trailer as she reprises her role as math teacher Ms Norbury to underline the movie’s message: Girls shouldn’t be trying to tear each other down in high school.
But it turns out they do as Cady and outcast friends Janis and Damian set out to ruin Regina’s image and status, forcing a clash between Cady and her nemesis. Lindsay Lohan and Rachel McAdams starred in the original film, which earned $128 million at the global box office and has since achieved cult teen movie status.
The Mean Girls trailer reimagines the original comedy as a movie musical directed by Samantha Jayne and Arturo Perez Jr. The musical numbers, complete with drumsticks playing on high school lockers, show Paramount looking to hit the right notes and follow Wonka and The Color Purple to a better box office for movie musicals after the underwhelming performance at the multiplex for West Side Story and In The Heights.
Fey wrote the screenplay along with Tim Meadows, who is once again Principal Duvall. The film also stars Jenna Fischer as Cady’s mom, Jon Hamm as Coach Carr, Mahi Alam as Kevin Ganatra and Connor Ratliff as Mr. Rapp.
