Smile was a surprise hit for Paramount last year, grossing $217 million worldwide; Not bad for a film which was originally intended for a streaming release. The studio is clearly ready for more, as they’ve announced that they’ve slated Smile 2 for an October 18, 2024 release.
Given the ongoing WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes, there’s only so far development on Smile 2 can proceed, but Paramount wanted to nail down that release date nonetheless. Parker Finn will once again return to direct, and although he purposefully left the door open for a sequel, he said last year that he wouldn’t want to repeat himself.
“I do think that there is still a lot of interesting stuff to explore in the world of Smile,” Finn said. “There certainly are stones that I left unturned by design. And then there are other things that I, at one point or another, wanted to put in the movie, but they didn’t end up in the movie for whatever reason. So those things are still exciting to me, but if there’s more to be done with Smile, I would never want to just repeat myself or retread the same ground. I’d want to make sure that there’s a new, exciting, fresh way into it that the audience isn’t anticipating. I also want to find some new ways to scare them and unnerve them. But as far as how it may connect to the first one, if we were to do it, I’d want that to be surprising as well.“
Based on Finn’s own short film, Laura Hasn’t Slept, Smile stars Sosie Bacon (As We See It) as Dr. Rose Cotter, a therapist who witnesses a bizarre, traumatic incident involving a patient and starts experiencing frightening occurrences that she can’t explain. As an overwhelming terror begins taking over her life, Rose must confront her troubling past in order to survive and escape her horrifying new reality. In addition to Sosie Bacon, Smile also stars Kal Penn (Harold & Kumar), Kyle Gallner (Scream), Jessie T. Usher (The Boys), Rob Morgan (Mudbound), Judy Reyes (Scrubs), and Gillian Zinser (90210).