Smile 3 is reportedly in the works, will the Smile curse go global?

It looks like we'll get to see the aftermath of that concert at the end of Smile 2. The latest issue of Production Weekly lists Smile 3 as a project in development with planned shooting to take place in 2025. Note that Paramount Pictures has not confirmed this, but, at the very least, the mention in PW is a positive sign things are moving in the right direction.

In addition to the recent report, Smile 2 has performed well critically and financially, with director Parker Finn talking about potential ideas for a third movie in several interviews. At the end of Smile 2 (SPOILER!) the entity kills Skye Riley on stage at one of her concerts, meaning that every single person in the audience would theoretically become its next victim. The entity will go global, spreading rapidly across the world at unprecedented rates.

The ending of Smile 2 took a huge gamble, and while somewhat predictable, it's still a bold move because now Finn is going to have to follow through on that promise in a third movie. Can he make a movie about a curse that is spreading around the entire world?

It seems like he's been thinking about the idea of pushing boundaries for a while, as he previously told SFX magazine that he's imagined a "lineage of Smile movies where each one becomes more off the rails than the previous one." The suggestion that this film series could evolve into a full-blown franchise is an exciting possibility.

Though the entity can shapeshift and take many forms, its true form is viscerally terrifying, and the nature of the monster, that it can be anyone and alter reality, could make for some groundbreaking and experimental storytelling.

A few weeks after Smile 2 was released in theaters, Finn chatted with Collider about the movie, suggesting there "are a lot of interesting roads that any future Smile could go down."

The catch is that both Smile and its sequel focused on small-scale stories, honing in on one specific character, Sosie Bacon's Rose Cutter in the first movie, and Naomi Scott's pop star persona Skye Riley in the second. With the curse unleashed on a concert crowd, how can Finn maintain that level of intimacy moving forward?

To Collider, he said that maintaining that sense of intimacy is important to him.

"Smile is a vehicle to tell really intense and hopefully thoughtful character stories, and so I’d wanna make sure, regardless of if more than one person might have it, that we still find a way to really invest intimacy into the storytelling."

It's hard to imagine pulling that off when you have thousands of potential infected people to contend with, but if anyone can do it, I'm sure Finn will figure something out.

For now, you can stream Smile and Smile 2 on Paramount+. Stay tuned for 1428 Elm for more updates on all things horror!