Box Office: ‘Smile 2’ Grinning With $23M Opening, ‘Anora’ Jolts Awards Race Awake

Paramount and Temple Hill are grinning widely.

Their new movie, Smile 2, is winning the domestic box office race with an estimated $23 million after earning $9.4 million on Friday, including more than $2 million in previews. That would put the film’s debut just ahead of the first Smile, a sleeper hit that opened to $22.6 million in late September 2022 on its way to grossing more than $217 million worldwide against a $17 million budget.

Once again written and directed by Parker Finn, the film follows a malevolent spirit that jumps hosts via a diabolical grin, this time infecting a troubled pop star (Naomi Scott) with a ton of trauma to feed on, according to The Hollywood Reporter‘s review of the film. Scott stars opposite Lukas Gage, Rosemarie DeWitt and Miles Gutierrez-Riley. This time the budget was $28 million, which is a modest sum for a major studio.

Smile 2 earned a B CinemaScore from audiences, the same grade as the first film. It’s having to fend off competition from holdover slasher pic Terrifier 3, which opened to $18.9 million last weekend despite being unrated and doing zero TV ads.

Terrifier 3, from Cineverse, looks to come in third on the weekend chart with $9 million to $10 million, a solid hold and putting its domestic total at roughly $26 million against a $2 million production budget.

Some are speculating that DreamWorks/Universal’s The Wild Robot is benefiting from Terrifier 3 since theaters won’t let anyone who is under 17 see the latter if they aren’t accompanied by an adult. (Exhibitors are treating it like an R-rated movie.) Rival studios suspect teens are buying tickets instead to see Wild Robt and then sneaking into Terrifer 3 (the same could also be true for Smile 2, which is rated R).

Whatever the case, Wild Robot — which is available in the home via premium VOD — has bragging rights to holding at second place in its fourth weekend as it crosses the $100 million mark domestically.

The big headline at the awards box office is Sean Baker’s Anora, which is opening in five locations in New York City and Los Angeles. The specialty movie from Neon follows a sex worker who falls for a Russian oligarch’s son and won the prestigious Palme d’Or at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival. Anora is on course to post a per-theater average of roughly $108,000, the best showing since Wes Anderson’s Asteroid City last year.

Last weekend, a handful of rival Oscar contenders didn’t fare so well when opting to open nationwide versus a platform release, including Jason Reitman’s Saturday Night.

Estimates will be updated Sunday morning.