A contentious line from the 2024 film adaptation of Mean Girls has been removed from a new digital streaming version of the movie.
As reported by Variety, an updated version of the new film on Amazon Prime Video has edited out a line referring to the phrase “fire crotch”, after Lindsay Lohan publicly said that she had been “hurt” by its inclusion.
Directed by Arturo Perez Jr. and Samantha Jayne, and written by Tina Fey, the revamped musical version of Mean Girls was released in cinemas last month.
It is an adaptation of the 2018 Broadway musical, which itself is based on the original 2004 movie, also written by Fey. Using the same plot, it follows socially naive teenager Cady Heron who, after moving back to the US from Africa, joins a new public school and soon becomes entangled with a “mean” group of girls known as the ‘Plastics’.
Last month, Lohan said that she was “hurt and disappointed” by the joke in the film. The term “fire crotch” is closely associated with a 2006 paparazzi video featuring Lohan, Paris Hilton and the socialite Brandon Davis.
In the new film, Megan Thee Stallion, who plays herself, utters the line, “We are going back red, Y2K fire crotch is back”. However, in the newly edited version, Megan just says, “We are going back red”.
Lohan starred as Cady Heron in the original 2004 movie and joined writer and co-star Tina Fey at the reboot’s premiere in New York earlier in the year.
Lohan also appears in the new film for a surprise cameo as a moderator at the Mathletes Championship, for which Variety reports she was paid in the region of $500,000 (£395,000).
Speaking about securing Logan for the cameo, Fey said: “Paramount was like, ‘Can you get any of the original ladies? And I was like, ‘I can’t fit five people in.’ I felt like if I could only get one person as a surprise, the original movie is really Lindsay’s movie. As great as they all are, she’s the heart of that movie.”
In a three-star review of the film, NME wrote: “The result is a film that’s more rehash than remodel, albeit a perfectly entertaining one. Where the original Mean Girls had the sparky, snarky confidence of Regina George, this one is more like Gretchen Wieners: less sure of itself, a bit try-hard, but ultimately quite likeable.”