Smile (2022) Dr. Rose Cotter has spent twenty years overcoming the abusive challenges of her childhood. Now in her profession as a psychiatrist, she successfully assists her patients with a compassionate role in their lives. Upon meeting her newest patient named Laura Weaver, she is faced with a challenging case. As the terrified patient describes the distressing experiences she has endured including an extended
lack of sleep convinced that she will be overcome if she rests. Laura explains that she has been followed by an evil entity ever since she witnessed her college professor bludgeon himself to death, and after stating that the entity reveals itself in the form of an unnatural smile on the faces of the people around her, panics as she tells the therapist that the specter is in the room with them. Despite the compassionate attempts of Rose to bring the patient to the realization that these occurrences are delusions, Rose is distraught as this ultimately fails when the patient slits her own throat. After witnessing the horrific events of the patient's suicide, Rose once again struggles with the mental health struggles from her youth. She soon begins to question her diagnosis of the deceased patient however, when she disturbingly realizes that various people around her seem to mindlessly grin. Conducting research of her own, Rose is surprised to discover that a series of terrible suicidal deaths have occurred after describing similar stories as Laura had. Determined to find the source of the deathly grin, Rose races against time as she too begins to have grim experiences of her own.
Smile 2 (2024) After the financial and critical successes of the first film, in various interviews between November 2022 and December 2023, writer/director Parker Finn stated that he had intentionally left portions of the first movie ambiguous with unresolved plotlines with the hope that he could explore these details in a future sequel. The filmmaker stated that while he intends that additional installments further explore the backstory of the entity, he will keep its mysterious nature intact. The filmmaker further stated that a follow-up movie would be notably different from the first, saying: "there is still a lot of interesting stuff to explore in the world of
Smile. ...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." In March 2023, Finn signed a first-look contract with Paramount Pictures with the studio wanting to develop additional horror projects with the filmmaker. The following month at CinemaCon 2023, Paramount officially announced that a sequel has been
green-lit and is in pre-production, with Parker Finn once again serving as writer/director. By December of the same year,
Naomi Scott was announced to be the star the movie. In January 2024,
Lukas Gage joined the cast as co-star, while Kyle Gallner was confirmed to be reprising his role as Joel from the first movie;
Rosemarie DeWitt will appear in the supporting cast. Principal photography commenced in
New York beginning January 2024 and is expected to complete in March of the same year. In June 2024, the first
trailer debuted, following the studio's initial
marketing for a fictional pop star character from the movie, with the official title confirmed to be
Smile 2. The film was released on October 18, 2024.
Smile 3 (TBA) In September 2024, writer/director Parker Finn confirmed plans to continue the series with a third film; stating: "...we've maybe only scooped a single glass of water out of the ocean. ...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." In December, it was reported that
Smile 3 was in development, and scheduled to begin principal photography in 2025. ==Short film==