Amanda Seyfried Says ‘Perfect’ Jennifer’s Body Was ‘Ruined’ by Bad Marketing: ‘I’m Looking Forward to the Sequel’

Amanda Seyfried feels Jennifer’s Body never got a fair shot upon its release in 2009.

The Emmy winner, 39, starred opposite Megan Fox in the teen horror comedy written by Diablo Cody, a film that tanked at the box office but has reached cult-classic status in the years since.

Looking back at her past roles in a video for GQ, Seyfried called Jennifer’s Body a “perfect movie” that was “ruined” by a marketing strategy that misrepresented it.

“It’s got balls,” she said of the film, directed by Karyn Kusama. “We were expressing a certain angst in a very, very specific, comedic way in a very specific genre. … There was everything you could want.”

Seyfried continued, “If the critics criticize anything it would be the marketing. The marketing sucked. It just did. And we all agree. … The marketing team cheapened it like it was just, you know, a romp, a gory romp. I think they ruined it.”

The actress, currently promoting her new Peacock series Long Bright River, said she and Fox, 38, made “a really good team.”

“I’m looking forward to the sequel. They’re working on it. I already said thumbs up. I was like, ‘Whenever you’re ready, I’m ready,’ ” teased Seyfried. “… We all just had a lot of fun, so I wanna celebrate it by doing a sequel.”

Oscar-winning screenwriter Cody, 46, told PEOPLE in January 2024 that she was working on making a Jennifer’s Body reboot or sequel happen. She reflected on its misfire release at the time, saying, “When it came out, the movie was not a success. And that was incredibly painful for me, because I loved that movie and it was such a personal project for me. I was badly injured.”

For the film’s 10th anniversary in 2019, Cody and Fox reunited in an interview for Entertainment Tonight, admitting the marketing wasn’t the right fit for the movie they’d set out to make.

“I do feel like obviously it was mismarketed, and I think probably you feel a lot of anger about that, right? Or you did at the time?” asked Fox, to which Cody responded, “I still do.” She added that “the studio had a strong, unshakable belief that this movie needed to be marketed to young men, specifically.”

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Fox added, “It didn’t really give it much of a chance. … I don’t like anything that I do, but even I, after seeing the movie, was like, ‘This is a f—— great, great movie.’ I expected to get s— on — that’s what was always happening and I figured was going to continue to happen — but I was surprised that the movie itself was not given more respect.”

“But year after year after year, it’s growing this — I don’t know, can it even be considered a cult following at this point? I feel like it’s broken through to where a lot of people are just obsessed with this movie,” said Fox.

Adam Brody, who also starred in Jennifer’s Body, told The Independent in 2023 that the film’s marketing “couldn’t have missed the mark harder.”

He added, “The film was directed by a woman, starring two women, written by that year’s screenwriting Oscar winner, and instead they’re like, ‘Let’s bury all of that. Don’t tell anyone that. This is for people who like Transformers.’ ”