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The filmmaker who gave Pinhead a new face may be the next one to take on the Smile curse. David Bruckner, director of The Night House and 2022’s Hellraiser, has reportedly been tapped to direct Smile 3 for Paramount Pictures.
The report comes from scooper Daniel Richtman, and Dread Central says it has independently verified it. Paramount has not officially announced the hire.
Bruckner would take over from Parker Finn, who created the franchise and wrote and directed both Smile and Smile 2. Finn is now on his remake of Andrzej Żuławski’s Possession at Paramount, directing from his own script with Callum Turner, Margaret Qualley and Paul Dano in the cast. Dread Central first reported in March that a third film was in development and that Finn was unlikely to return to the director’s chair.
David Bruckner’s Horror Credits
Bruckner has been making horror for nearly two decades. He co-wrote and co-directed The Signal (2007) with Jacob Gentry and Dan Bush, made the “Amateur Night” segment of the original V/H/S (2012), and directed a segment of the 2015 anthology Southbound.
His features have leaned hard on grief. The Ritual (2017) sends a group of old friends into a Swedish forest after one of them is killed, and The Night House (2020) stars Rebecca Hall as a widow who starts uncovering her husband’s secrets after his suicide. In 2022 he brought a new Hellraiser to Hulu, with Jamie Clayton as Pinhead. That puts him on familiar ground with Smile, a curse that passes from one person to the next through witnessing a traumatic death.
The Smile Films So Far
Finn built Smile (2022) out of his own short film, Laura Hasn’t Slept. Paramount originally planned to release it on Paramount+, then moved it to theaters after positive test screenings, and it went on to gross about $217 million worldwide on a $17 million budget.
Smile 2 followed on October 18, 2024, with Naomi Scott as pop star Skye Riley, and grossed $138 million worldwide.
Paramount has not set a release date for Smile 3.
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