Great news for horror fans—or just working actors hoping to pick up gigs standing up at televised sports games, smiling creepily into the camera: 2022 horror hit Smile officially has a sequel not just in development, but on the schedule for 2024. This is not wholly surprising, in so far as the original Smile, which debuted exactly a year ago this very day (spooky!) at Fantastic Fest, did that thing that horror films do so well, from a financial point of view: Teensy-tiny budget, $200 million return. Repeat for as many highly literalized metaphors for trauma as you can manage.
Per Variety, the new Smile movie will land in the midst of next year’s spooky season, on October 18, 2024. The film is expected to be both written and directed by a returning Parker Finn, whose original short Laura Hasn’t Slept served as the inspiration for the film. That movie starred Sosie Bacon as a therapist who begins hallucinating after seeing one of her patients commit suicide in front of her. And, yeah, without spoiling anything, it’s very easy to see how Finn could find room for a sequel in this particular franchise.
Interestingly, the first Smile got at least some of its success from Paramount deciding to bail on plans to release the film as a streaming exclusive for its Paramount+ service, a practice that most of the studios have stepped back from as COVID-19 lockdowns fade into the past (Most notably the former HBO Max, which killed off multiple movies intended for a streaming release rather than bother finishing them.) In that light, it’s worth noting that the studio made another, similar schedule tweak today, taking the previously Paramount+-bound film version of the Mean Girls musical, and announcing that it’ll now release in theaters in the dead of winter next year, on January 12. The film, which will star Reneé Rapp, Angourie Rice, Jaquel Spivey and Auli’i Cravalho, is based on the Tina Fey-penned musica; Fey and Tim Meadows will reprise their roles from the original film.
