Paramount’s Parker Finn-directed horror pic Smile has laughed its way across the $100M mark globally. And it did so in under two weeks of release. Through Tuesday, the gross is $102.3M worldwide, made up of $55.5M domestic and $46.8M from the international box office.
From Paramount Players and Temple Hill, the movie has seen some scary holds. Significantly, the overseas sophomore frame (with actuals included) was 32% above opening weekend. As we noted on Sunday, when we saw it easily hitting $100M, that is just wild – a hold of that sort is simply shocking. Word of mouth is playing its part as well as savvy timing and marketing on the movie that stars Sosie Bacon, Jessie T. Usher, Kyle Gallner, Robin Weigert, Caitlin Stasey with Kal Penn and Rob Morgan.
Fifteen offshore markets opened at No. 1 in the first frame, rising to 24 in the second weekend. The lead international markets to date are the UK ($5.9M), Mexico ($4.6M), Germany ($4M), France ($3.6M) and Australia ($2.5M). Each of those was up this past session versus last weekend — Germany actually doubled its take. Leading European exhibitor Vue International even chimed in today to note the performance saying it was “almost unprecedented with horror releases.”
Domestically, Smile had the second-best hold ever for an R-rated horror movie on the second weekend, with an amazing -22%. It led North America at No. 1 in both its freshman and sophomore frames.
Said Brian Robbins, CEO and President of Paramount Pictures, “The moment we saw this film we knew it had immense cinematic potential, and we’re beyond thrilled and proud to see that audiences around the world agree wholeheartedly and are turning out in record numbers.”
He added, “Thank you to our director, Parker Finn, our creative partners and our production team for delivering a fantastically terrifying movie; and thank you to our global marketing and distributions teams for hitting it out of the park once again.”
Smile has been boosted by an innovative and robust marketing campaign, including a grassroots stunt that went viral, in which actors, “smiling” menacingly, were placed in high-visibility locations appearing on camera during TV broadcasts such as in the stands behind home plate at baseball games, in the stands of NFL games and among the audience during morning shows.
The stunt generated extensive media coverage, significant social conversation and over 101M+ video views on social media. Other marketing highlights included a TikTok Community Effect that has gone viral globally with over 400M video views on TikTok and over 250k videos created; AR lenses in partnership with Instagram and Snapchat allowing users to spread creepy smiles on their socials at an alarming rate of 5X the rate vs. other entertainment properties. On Giphy, custom Gifs were viewed over 400M times and Smile became the first brand integration on the AI Model site Craiyon;. The movie world premiered at Austin’s Fantastic Fest.
Smile is written and directed by Finn, produced by Marty Bowen, Wyck Godfrey, Isaac Klausner, and Robert Salerno; and executive produced by Adam Fishback.