Paramount Pictures’ “Smile 2,” narrowly outgrossed its predecessor’s opening weekend, making a decent $23M this weekend. Counting overseas ticket sales, and with production costs in the $27M range, the sequel has made back its budget in a single weekend.
These numbers are an improvement over previous tracking numbers which had the “Smile 2” opening at around $20M. No doubt word of mouth spread throughout the weekend, and numbers kept improving from Friday on. It’ll be interesting to see how it holds next weekend.
With the good reviews (85% on Rotten Tomatoes), “Smile 2” could have easily had a $30M weekend if Paramount’s marketing hadn’t been so baffling. The film only had its review embargo lift on Wednesday, just a day before Thursday previews began. They kept a tight lid on this one.
“Smile” (2022) had a budget of $17M and somehow managed to gross $217M worldwide. I gather it’ll be very hard for the sequel to match these numbers. It needs some major legs. Regardless, here’s this weekend’s top 10, via JoBlo.
“Hope,” Na’s first film in ten years — his last one being the exemplary “The Wailing” —is a gloriously messy, blood-soaked sci-fi epic that may become a cult classic despite—or because of—its polarizing nature.