These Girls

Mean Girls is a 2004 American teen comedy film directed by Mark Waters and written by Tina Fey. It stars Lindsay Lohan as the main character Cady Heron, alongside Rachel McAdams as Regina George. The cast also features Fey, Tim Meadows, Amy Poehler, Ana Gasteyer, Lacey Chabert, Lizzy Caplan, Daniel Franzese, Neil Flynn, Jonathan Bennett, and Amanda Seyfried in her feature film debut. Its plot centers on a naïve teenage girl who transfers to a public high school in the United States after years of homeschooling in Africa. She quickly befriends two outcasts and the trio form a plan to exact revenge on the queen bee of an envied clique, known as the "Plastics". Mean Girls was produced by Lorne Michaels' multimedia entertainment studio, Broadway Video. Fey conceived the idea for the film after reading the 2002 self-help book Queen Bees and Wannabes by Rosalind Wiseman. The book describes female high school social cliques, school bullying and the resulting damaging effect on teenagers. Fey also drew from her own experience at Upper Darby High School in Upper Darby Township, Pennsylvania, as an inspiration for some of the film's concepts. Principal photography began in September 2003 and ended in November. Although the film is set in the Chicago suburb of Evanston, Illinois, shooting took place primarily in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Mean Girls premiered at Pacific's Cinerama Dome in Los Angeles on April 19, 2004, and was theatrically released in the United States by Paramount Pictures on April 30. It received positive reviews, with critics praising Waters' direction, Fey's script and its humor, and the performances of the cast, with Lohan's acting in particular earning high praise. The film also proved financially successful, grossing $130.1 million on a $17–18 million budget. Lohan won two MTV Movie Awards and three Teen Choice Awards, among other accolades. In 2021, Richard Brody of The New Yorker ranked Lohan's performance as the eleventh-best film performance of the 21st century. A sequel, Mean Girls 2, premiered on ABC Family in 2011. The film also spawned various adaptations, including a stage musical, which premiered on Broadway in 2018, with a film adaptation of the musical released in 2024.