Smile 2 writer-director Parker Finn has outdone himself once more.

It’s rare for a horror sequel to surpass its hit predecessor, but Finn’s second installment has done exactly that with critics and audiences. It’s also on pace to exceed Smile‘s opening weekend box office of $22.6 million from two years ago. In any event, Smile 2‘s success shouldn’t come as too big of a surprise since Ohio native Finn already defied the odds with his feature directorial debut. The 2022 horror film about a curse that’s passed on through an unsettling smile was originally made for Paramount+, but as soon as its first test screening brought the house down, the Sosie Bacon-led film pivoted to theatrical, grossing $217 million on a $17 million budget. 

Finn immediately engaged in sequel talks following his end-of-September opening weekend, but instead of picking up right where he left off with Kyle Gallner’s curse-stricken detective and exploring his week-long haunting, he opted to take a big left turn by making Naomi Scott’s pop star character, Skye Riley, the center of his follow-up.

“When I sent the script to Kyle, he called me and was like, ‘You know what? You made the right choice.’ So he was very supportive of it. He totally got the movie I was going for, and he’s just the best guy,” Finn tells The Hollywood Reporter. 

Scott’s performance is being hailed by this writer and many others as the finest performance of her career, reigniting the debate around horror movies deserving more awards recognition. Finn is also of the mind that Scott’s go-for-broke performance as a tormented pop star should be considered.

“She has this remarkable X factor and gravitas to her where I immediately believed her as this mega pop star. She was also capable of playing this really human, raw, broken person that is spiraling downhill and doing everything in between,” Finn says. “She sings all of the original songs in the film. She also performs the choreography herself. She did all of it, and some part of me was really tickled by the idea of taking a Disney princess [Aladdin’s Jasmine] and doing this to her.”

Just a couple months ago, M. Night Shyamalan released his own pop star-centered thriller, Trap, and while both filmmakers were caught off guard by the overlap, Finn never worried that he was in the midst of his own “twin movies” phenomenon that has persisted throughout cinematic history. Whether it’s 1997’s Dante’s Peak and Volcano or Guillermo del Toro and Maggie Gyllenhaal’s upcoming takes on Frankenstein lore, post-Poor Things (2023) and Lisa Frankenstein (2024), parallel inspiration comes with the territory. 

“I’m a big fan of Night, and I think it was at CinemaCon [2024] where the premises of both Smile 2 and Trap were revealed,” Finn recalls. “So it was probably a surprise for both of us, but outside of there being a large pop star element to both, I knew there was very little chance that there would be much crossover in what the two movies are actually doing. There’s room for all kinds of stories.”

There was another case involving 2024’s Immaculate and The First Omen, and both films deal with two young American novitiates whose bodily autonomy is forcibly taken away in the most disturbing ways imaginable. The two genre pics also have scenes that directly pay homage to Isabelle Adjani’s famous miscarriage scene in Andrzej Żuławski’s Possession (1981), a film that Finn and Robert Pattinson are slated to remake.

“It would take somebody out of their mind to remake Possession, and I think I might be just the guy,” Finn says.

As for the future of the Smile franchise, Smile 2 ends on a tantalizing note with widespread implications for a potential third film, and while Finn can only say so much at this moment in time, he stresses that the franchise will still be rooted in character study.

“I love this idea that potential future iterations of Smile could go bigger and more off the rails and even crazier and more unhinged,” Finn says. “But, for me, what’s important about Smile is that there is a real human, character-driven, intimate nature to the storytelling. So even if the world gets much larger, I’d want to make sure that the stories we’re telling inside of it are still quite impactful on a human level.”

Below, during a recent conversation with THR, Finn also discusses casting Jack Nicholson’s son, Ray, and how there was more to it than just a connection to one of cinema’s most indelible smiles.

So how soon after Smile’s release did sequel talks officially get serious? And did you have the shape of Smile 2 before going into those meetings?

It was very soon. It was right after opening weekend. I felt like I was so close to the first film that I hadn’t even dared to dream of a sequel yet. I wanted that first film to feel like a self-contained complete story. But in approaching a sequel, I wanted to make sure that I wasn’t going to do anything that just felt like a traditional continuation or a retread of the first one. I really wanted to challenge myself to do something unexpected and quite strange for a sequel to Smile. So there was a little trial and error in the development, and it was the discovery of the character of Skye Riley and this world of a mega pop star that unlocked everything.

Yeah, you could have done the obvious and centered the movie on Kyle Gallner’s Joel since he inherited the curse at the end of the last movie, but given that the original short [Laura Hasn’t Slept] and feature were led by female characters, did you want to maintain that pattern?

It was less that. I love Kyle Gallner both as an actor and as a person, and I want to work with him again and put him in everything. He’s so great and he’s become such a great friend, but I needed to find a character whose story was worth placing the smile on their shoulders. It had to be somebody who had the themes and motifs and emotionality that I was interested in exploring. So I really had to find that new character that it made sense for rather than just falling back on what we had done in the first film.

Kyle is not hurting for gigs. In fact, he’s working with his Smile co-star Sosie Bacon again right now. But did you still have the “sorry, bro” conversation with him?

I told Kyle early on while I was writing the script. I was like, “Listen, I’m centering it on a new character, but Joel is going to have this major, major bravura sequence inside of the film. It’s going to be incredibly difficult, and you’re really going to have something to sink your teeth into.” And when I later sent the script to Kyle, he called me and was like, “You know what? You made the right choice.” So he was very supportive of it. He totally got the movie I was going for, and he’s just the best guy.

Does it warm your heart that you’ve spawned an ongoing friendship and collaboration between Kyle and Sosie?

Absolutely. The two of them were so remarkable together in Smile, and it’s fantastic to see them going back into the arena together. Their chemistry is fantastic, and they’re both so incredibly talented, so I can’t wait to see that film.

To convincingly play a popstar and genuinely perform as a popstar and also pull off the horror of it all, I can’t imagine there was too long a list of potential Skye Rileys. Did Naomi Scott emerge pretty quickly? 

I met with a lot of people. There was an audition process, of course, but it was very clear, very quickly that Naomi was the perfect storm for this character. She has this remarkable X factor and gravitas to her where I immediately believed her as this mega pop star. I didn’t doubt it for a second, but she was also capable of playing this really human, raw, broken person that is spiraling downhill and doing everything in between. Of course, she’s this phenomenal singer. She sings all of the original songs in the film. She also performs the choreography herself. She did all of it, and some part of me was really tickled by the idea of taking a Disney princess [Aladdin‘s Jasmine] and doing this to her.

You made Smile (2022) for streaming until that famous test screening, but it still had a healthy budget all things considered. So how different did the two productions feel since this one was made for theatrical from the start? 

It was certainly exciting. There was a lot of trust from the studio, and I’m thankful that Paramount got behind this very weird sequel to Smile. I don’t think anybody was overtly asking for this take initially, but the movie is bigger than the first one. It’s bigger and bolder in all ways, but I wanted to make sure that it wasn’t bigger just for bigger’s sake. There had to be a real organic reason to do it, and this movie was so much more all encompassing as a film and as a production. So, yes, it is a bigger movie than the first one, and yet, it had all of the same production challenges. As a filmmaker, I’m always trying to punch above my budget weight and schedule. I’m always trying to fit a ten-gallon movie into a five-gallon bucket, and it was the same on this film.

Ultimately, Smile 2 and Trap are very different movies, but when you first heard about M. Night Shyamalan’s movie, did you initially worry that you were in your own Armageddon–Deep Impact situation? 

(Laughs.) Well, I’m a big fan of Night, and I think it was at CinemaCon [2024] where the premises of both Smile 2 and Trap were revealed. So it was probably a surprise for both of us, but outside of there being a large pop star element to both, I knew there was very little chance that there would be much crossover in what the two movies are actually doing. There’s room for all kinds of stories, and I’m glad that people seem to enjoy Trap. I also hope that people are excited to see Smile 2.

A similar thing happened with Immaculate and The First Omen earlier this year. There’s also been a bunch of Frankenstein movies in the works lately, so it’s always something that’s happened in this town.

Yeah, there’s something in the air, I suppose.

One of cinema’s most famous smiles, if not most famous, is that of one Jack Nicholson. 

(Laughs.)

The Shining has several examples of it. While Ray Nicholson is really impactful in his two scenes, did part of you also want a connection to that iconic smile?

Well, there’s two things to say here. First, I’ve spoken ad nauseam about The Shining being one of my absolute favorite films of all time, and Jack Nicholson being one of my favorite actors of all time. Having said that, Ray auditioned for the role, and I was just absolutely bowled over by his audition. Yes, he has that lineage, and of course, he’s got those genetics. He’s got that incredible smile and those really mischievous eyes that instantly remind you of his father and are iconic. But Ray himself really brings something so special to this film, and I can’t imagine anybody else playing that role.

I love the sinister undertones you create by way of your camera moves, scene transitions, sound design and score. Is that one of the many ways in which The Shining has rubbed off on your filmmaking?

Probably. [Stanley] Kubrick is my favorite filmmaker of all time, and I wear my influences on my sleeves. I’m always chasing that high. I love his craftsmanship, his camera work, his sets, the way he uses score and sound design, and it is something that’s always on my mind. But in The Shining in particular, so much of that film happens in brightly lit areas. It’s not trying to fall back on horror tropes or easy things to spook an audience. It’s really about the tone, the atmosphere, the performances, the context of what’s going on, and that’s something that I’m always trying to achieve. It’s also one of the things I love about Smile 2. It takes place in this shiny, bright, glamorous, glitzy world of a pop star. We’re not in dank basements and spidery attics. We’re in really unexpected locations where really horrific things happen, and that really keeps the audience on their heels. It never quite lets them settle into things. So what Kubrick did in The Shining is incredibly effective, and it’s what I try to do in my films.

You didn’t bring in Rose’s sister, fiancé or boss for the role of “the expert” on the matter. Instead, Peter Jacobson plays a new character who serves that purpose. Would it have just been too tiny town to connect Rose and Skye that directly?

I love this idea that the Smile Entity is on this path of destruction and that it doesn’t play small just because somebody was in the first film. Of course, Smile 2 needed the connective tissue that Kyle Gallner brings to the film, but I was really excited about the challenge of going from Joel, this Newark police detective, to a mega famous pop star living in New York City. That felt like a really exciting challenge, and creating two separate worlds inside of the same universe was something that I was really chasing.

For the awesome upside-down cityscape shot that goes straight into Skye’s apartment, did you actually shoot that shot upside down? Or did you flip the image in post? 

For that one in particular, there’s two pieces of it. There’s the exterior component and the interior component. For the exterior, we were actually so lucky to be one of the early productions to get to fly a drone in Manhattan. It’s something that forever was not allowed, but it’s just recently started to loosen up if you have the right kind of pilot and the right licensing to do it. For safety reasons and all of those kinds of things, we shot that [exterior cityscape shot] right side up and flipped it, but knowing how it was going to go through Skye’s window and come inside her apartment, that part was actually shot upside down. Now, there’s a lot of different ways you could approach that, but we figured out the way that worked best for us. So the outside was shot right side up, the inside was shot upside down, and then we married the two.

There’s also one late in the game where it starts out right side up and then it transitions to upside down in the same shot.

Yes, correct. That was actually shot on a crane. I wanted to do a very fast rotation upside down, so that it would feel very disorienting and almost make an audience’s stomach drop.

Whether it’s Naomi in Smile 2 or James McAvoy in Split or Toni Collette in Hereditary, I think it’s a shame that genre performances don’t get awards consideration all that often. Ruth Gordon and Kathy Bates are among a half-dozen winning exceptions. Does that stick in your craw a little?

I feel beyond lucky just to be able to make films. It’s a dream career, and I hope to keep making movies. Awards are lovely, but the real reward is the movie itself and getting to share that with the world. But I agree. Naomi is an absolute powerhouse. She gives a tour-de-force performance in this film, and if I was on an awards committee, even unbiased, I would say she absolutely deserves consideration. So I hope that the industry starts recognizing that.

Smile 2 ends in a very ambitious place for a potential third film, and with an ending like that, I have to imagine you’ve given a third film some forethought. 

(Laughs.) 

Could you pitch something tomorrow if you absolutely had to?

Well, there’s a lot of really exciting places that Smile could go to from here. I love this idea that potential future iterations of Smile could go bigger and more off the rails and even crazier and more unhinged. But, for me, what’s important about Smile is that there is a real human, character-driven, intimate nature to the storytelling. So even if the world gets much larger, I’d want to make sure that the stories we’re telling inside of it are still quite impactful on a human level.

I mentioned The First Omen and Immaculate earlier, and neither of those films were shy about their Possession homages. There’s that parallel inspiration again. So are you really going to take a crack at remaking Possession? 

It would take somebody out of their mind to remake Possession, and I think I might be just the guy.

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Smile 2 is now playing in movie theaters.