The 2020s are far from over, yet it’s already been a fantastic decade for horror with exciting new creatives and franchises cropping up left and right. From Danny and Michael Philippou and their excellent feature debut Talk to Me and follow-up Bring Her Back, to Ti West and his X trilogy, Zach Cregger with Barbarian and Weapons, and the recent wave of YouTube creators turned horror maestros, including Mark Fischbach, Chris Stuckman, Kane Parsons, and Curry Barker, new terrifying ideas have been spawning from all corners of the industry and reaching wild new levels of success. Among the biggest breakouts of the early 2020s, however, was undoubtedly Parker Finn with his franchise Smile. The first feature, released in 2022 based on a short film, and its 2024 follow-up were massive hits, earning a combined box office haul of over $350 million and rave reviews from critics and audiences.
Both films used two vastly different characters — Sosie Bacon‘s therapist Rose Cotter and Naomi Scott‘s pop star Skye Riley — to explore the same terrifying premise. In Smile, those cursed by a malevolent entity see constant hallucinations of people unnaturally smiling at them and are haunted by increasingly disturbing visions until, inevitably, they take their own life in front of someone with the same awful grin. The curse is passed to any witnesses, creating a seemingly unending chain that stems back to some unknown origin. It’s a flexible premise that Finn has said he’s open to exploring further if there’s a thoughtful, thematic idea to do so, like with the character-driven first two films. Until a third installment is announced, though, IDW Publishing is giving the burgeoning franchise a new chapter on the page.
The comic giant’s horror imprint, IDW Dark, is expanding its collection of works based on Paramount’s biggest properties. Among them is a new comic titled Any Given Smile, which will take the series’ haunting premise to the gridiron in 1995 against the backdrop of the American Arena League football championship. Entertainment Weekly just shared an exclusive look at the story with five new covers that tie into its themes, from a bloody football that appears to be smiling by Jock, to a grinning quarterback illustrated by Ashley Witter, a torn trading card by Pablo M. Collar, and a haunted gambling underworld brought to life by Martin Simmonds and Joëlle Jones. The GLAAD Media Award-winning Collar also crafted the interior art for the new five-issue series, which was penned by Eisner Award-nominee Stephanie Williams and features colors and letters by Triona Farrell and Ariana Maher, respectively.
Collider Exclusive · Horror Survival Quiz Which Horror Villain Do You Have the Best Chance of Surviving? Jason Voorhees · Michael Myers · Freddy Krueger · Pennywise · Chucky
Five killers. Five completely different ways to die — if you’re not smart enough, fast enough, or self-aware enough to avoid it. Only one of them is the villain your particular set of instincts gives you a fighting chance against. Eight questions will figure out which one.
🏕️Jason
🔪Michael
💤Freddy
🎈Pennywise
🪆Chucky
01
Something feels wrong. You can’t explain it — you just know. What do you do? First instincts are the difference between the survivor and the first act casualty.
02
Where are you most likely to find yourself when things go wrong? Setting is everything in horror. Where you are determines which rules apply.
03
What is your most reliable survival asset? Every survivor has a quality the villain didn’t account for. What’s yours?
04
What kind of fear is hardest for you to fight through? Knowing your weakness is the first step to not dying because of it.
05
You’re with a group when things start going wrong. What’s your role? Horror movies are brutally clear about who survives group situations and who doesn’t.
06
What’s the horror movie mistake you’re most likely to make? Honest self-assessment is a survival skill. Denial is not.
07
What’s your best weapon against something that can’t be stopped by conventional means? Every horror villain has a weakness. The survivors are always the ones who find it.
08
It’s the final scene. You’re the last one standing. How did you make it? The final survivor always has a reason. What’s yours?
Your Survival Odds Have Been Calculated Your Best Chance Is Against…
Your instincts, your strengths, and your particular way of thinking under pressure point to one villain you actually have a fighting chance against. Everyone else — good luck.
Camp Crystal Lake · Friday the 13th
Jason Voorhees
Jason is relentless, but he is also predictable — and that is the gap you would exploit.
He moves in straight lines toward his target. He doesn’t strategise, doesn’t adapt, doesn’t outsmart. He simply pursues.
Your ability to keep moving, use the environment, and resist the panic that freezes most victims gives you a genuine edge.
The Crystal Lake survivors were always the ones who stopped running in circles and started thinking about terrain, water, and distance.
You think like that. Which means Jason, for all his indestructibility, would face someone who simply refused to be where he expected.
Haddonfield, Illinois · Halloween
Michael Myers
Michael watches before he moves. He is patient, methodical, and almost impossible to detect — until it’s too late for anyone who isn’t paying close enough attention.
But you are paying attention. You notice the shape in the window, the car parked slightly wrong, the silence where there should be sound.
Michael’s power lies in the invisibility of ordinary suburbia — the fact that nothing ever looks wrong until it already is.
Your spatial awareness and instinct to map every room, every exit, and every shadow before you need them is precisely the quality Laurie Strode had.
You are not a victim waiting to happen. You are someone who already suspects something is wrong — and acts on it.
Elm Street · A Nightmare on Elm Street
Freddy Krueger
Freddy wins by getting inside your head — using your own fears, your own memories, your own subconscious as weapons against you. That strategy requires a target who can be destabilised.
You are harder to destabilise than most. You’ve faced uncomfortable truths about yourself and you haven’t looked away.
The survivors on Elm Street were always the ones who understood what was happening and chose to face it rather than flee from it.
Freddy’s greatest weakness is that his power evaporates in the presence of someone who refuses to give him the fear he feeds on.
Your psychological resilience — the ability to stay grounded when reality itself becomes unreliable — is exactly the quality that keeps you alive here.
Derry, Maine · It
Pennywise
Pennywise is ancient, shapeshifting, and feeds on terror — but it has one critical vulnerability: it cannot function against someone who genuinely stops being afraid of it.
The Losers Club didn’t survive because they were braver than everyone else. They survived because they faced their fears together, and faced them honestly.
You ask the questions others avoid. You look directly at what frightens you rather than turning away.
That directness — the refusal to let fear fester in the dark — is Pennywise’s worst nightmare.
It chose the wrong target when it chose you. You are exactly the kind of person whose fear tastes like nothing at all.
Chicago · Child’s Play
Chucky
Chucky’s greatest advantage is that nobody takes him seriously until it’s already too late. He exploits the gap between how something looks and what it actually is.
You don’t have that gap. You take threats seriously regardless of how they present — and you never make the mistake of underestimating something because of its size or appearance.
Chucky relies on surprise, on the delay between recognition and response. You close that delay faster than almost anyone.
Your instinct to treat every unfamiliar thing with appropriate scepticism — rather than dismissing it because it seems absurd — is the exact quality that keeps you breathing.
Against Chucky, not laughing is already winning. You are very good at not laughing.
What Will ‘Any Given Smile’ Be About?
Any Given Smile will depict the run-up to the big AAL championship, a moment that should be a historic occasion for the Sharks in their 20 years of operation. All their hopes ride on a backup quarterback who has emerged as a star when the lights have shone brightest, but he’s feeling the pressure from his teammates, fans, and the gambling underworld to whom he owes a great debt. Before the game, the community is rocked by a string of mysterious suicides, which sends one suspicious sports journalist digging for any correlation to the game and, particularly, the cloud of sports gambling that looms over it. In reality, the Smile Entity is at work, violently sowing distrust among the community at a time when tensions are high, and the payouts are massive.
Williams told EW that the idea to explore the Smile universe through football was tied to both her love of sports, the nature of the people who play the game, and the increasing presence of sports betting giants like FanDuel and DraftKings in advertising and partnerships with the major sports leagues. It was a rare chance to combine her own interests with a bloody idea that feels right at home with how Finn explored trauma and stardom through his cursed horror.
“Because that universe is often about people who are a little bit broken or just have things going on, football players almost always have some type of drama, some type of backstory that is sometimes a little unsavory. And then also…sports gambling. Very big. Didn’t know that would happen after our pitch, but it just all aligned. So this was the perfect chance for me to get my other fandoms and obsessions into a work.”
Any Given Smile is available to pre-order now from your local comic store. Check out the variant covers courtesy of EW in the gallery above.
