“Smile 2” has carved out a decent $23 million in its opening weekend, easily topping the otherwise sleepy North American box office charts. The R-rated sequel to Paramount creepy psychological thriller “Smile” debuted on par with expectations and even with the original film, which opened to $22.6 million in 2022. That movie, which was commissioned […]

Director Parker Finn beat the odds with the first “Smile” film. Shot for $17 million, the 2022 horror turned into a box office behemoth grossing over $200 million worldwide. So while shooting “Smile 2,” Finn took the same approach, pushing his budget and schedule to the limits in a process he described as fitting “a […]

The box office is ear-to-ear for “Smile 2,” with Paramount’s horror entry landing $9.4 million from 3,619 domestic locations across Friday and preview screenings. That’s above the $8.2 million opening day that the first “Smile” earned in 2022 — a successful kick-off for this sequel, which carries a $28 million production budget. With Halloween season […]

SPOILER ALERT: This story contains spoilers for “Smile 2,” now in theaters. Parker Finn, the writer and director of 2022’s horror hit “Smile” and the just-released “Smile 2,” has taken one of the most recognizable horror ideas in recent years and blown it up even bigger for the sequel. In this chapter, troubled pop star Skye […]

“Smile 2,” a sequel to Paramount’s creepy psychological thriller, is hoping to put a grin on the faces of despondent movie theater owners. The film is projected to collect $20 million to $25 million from 3,500 North American theaters in its first weekend of release. Those revenues would be on par with the original “Smile,” […]

"Smile 2" is a flash-cut horror parable, but the story it’s telling is that pop fame makes you crazy. Though the movie is hardly subtle, Parker Finn has become a clever enough filmmaker to make reality feel like a hallucination and hallucinations feel like reality.