Turn that frown upside down: There might be more Smile movies on the way.
Writer-director Parker Finn already has his gears spinning on what could happen in potential sequels within the horror franchise.
The second film, starring Naomi Scott as a tormented pop star dealing with the grinning demons, debuted in theaters Oct. 18, two years after the original, led by Sosie Bacon, became a surprise blockbuster in 2022.
“There’s so many exciting roads that Smile could go down,” Finn told The Hollywood Reporter at the sequel’s Los Angeles premiere Oct. 14.
“We’ll have to see how audiences react to Smile 2, but I think that’s what’s great about Smile is there’s an opportunity to tell all different kinds of diverse stories and sort of place ourselves in different worlds that Smile then comes in and invades,” he added.
The director also told GamesRadar+ that “if we are lucky with how audiences can connect with and embrace” Smile 2 at the box office, “I think the sky’s the limit” with additional sequels.
Paramount Pictures
Finn seems to have already lined up his next project outside of the Smile universe: Multiple outlets reported back in June that he was in early stages of writing and directing a remake of the 1981 horror film Possession, with Robert Pattinson also attached as a producer.
More of the Smile franchise’s lore is revealed and expanded in the bonkers second film, which briefly carries over star Kyle Gallner’s character from the first film to propel the story further.
As Finn told Den of Geek magazine, they wanted to “make sure that we were coming back to do a sequel that felt really worthwhile,” something “unique and really its own thing.”
“In the first movie, there’s a lot of mystery, and the audience is learning about it as the character is. In the second movie, they’re coming in with more knowledge than where the character is,” he explained. “With the audience potentially being ahead of the character, I wanted to lean into that and see if I could use that against the audience and invite them in.”
Paramount Pictures/Paramount +
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He continued, “I love this idea of partway through the movie if the audience might start to feel like, ‘Oh, wow, wait. Am I the evil? Am I doing this to the character?’ ”
In September, Finn told SFX magazine he envisions each installment getting progressively wilder than the last.
“There are some ideas that I think are very exciting. I think it’s really fun to imagine a lineage of Smile movies where each one becomes more off the rails than the previous one,” he said. “What’s really interesting about Smile is that you can find yourself in different stories, different characters, different worlds.”
Smile 2 is in theaters now.
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