The horror genre has seen a very remarkable year in terms of turning indie filmmakers into major box office winners. But while many are looking at Curry Barker’s Obsession and Kane Parsons’ Backrooms as the signal of a new era in horror, the genre has been flipping visionary indies into major hits for years now. The early 2020s saw filmmakers like Zach Cregger (Barbarian) and Oz Perkins (Longlegs) breaking out into the mainstream, but along with them came Parker Finn, who has been one of the only new voices in horror to create an entire franchise out of his work.
The Smile movies have each made over a $100 million each at the box office, on budgets that have yet to exceed $30 million. It’s one of the biggest horror franchises Paramount has right now, besides A Quiet Place, and Smile 2 was arguably the biggest jump in quality we’ve seen in a horror sequel in years. So no surprise then that reports are now in that Smile 3 is in development.
Variety has confirmed that Smile 3 is happening, and that David Bruckner is directing the threequel. Bruckner is best known for directing horror films like The Ritual (2017), and the Hellraiser reboot (2022), with several high-profile projects on the way (like The Blob reboot). The screenplay is being written by Nick Antosca (Apple’s Cape Fear reboot, Candy, Verity).
Obviously, Smile 3 is the first installment not to be written and directed by Parker Finn; the series creator will reportedly be involved as a producer, after he “pitched the framework for the third installment.” Production Company Temple Hill will once again produce alongside Paramount.
No official Smile 3 story details have been revealed yet, but there is a clear story angle, based on how the series has progressed.
The Smile series is unique in that each installment has been its own standalone, loosely connected by the chain bodies the ‘Smile Demon’ leaves in its wake, as it jumps from host to host via the trauma of watching someone die. The first film saw a therapist named Rose Cotter (Sosie Bacon) try and fail to stop the demon after it killed one of her patients. Rose’s death infected her ex-boyfriend Joel (Kyle Gallner), who (in the opening of the sequel) used his resources as a cop to pass the demon onto some low-life drug dealers. That plan failed and Joel died, leaving upscale drug dealer Lewis Fregoi (Lukas Gage) infected. Lewis took things to a new level when he passed the demon to pop star Skye Riley (Naomi Scott), who tried and failed to defeat it, ultimately getting possessed and killing herself on stage in front of an entire stadium of fans.
The implication at the end of Smile 2 is that the Smile Demon may now go beyond the one-to-one transfer and infect an entire mass of people who saw Skye Riley die. That could mean Smile Demons (plural) everywhere, which would be a very different kind of film from the first two – something more like Invasion of the Body Snatchers or (more recently), Bird Box. It could very well be why a new creative team is being brought in, if the studio feels like the scope (and budget) of Smile 3 is bigger than what Finn can handle at this stage. Parker Finn will be working on a different new project: his remake of the horror film Possession (1981), starring Callum Turner and Margaret Qualley, which will be released next summer.
You can stream Smile and Smile 2 on Paramount+. What do you want to see in the third film?
