Amy Winehouse’s “tragic” story inspired new horror sequel ‘Smile 2’, says director
nme.comSmile 2 director Parker Finn has revealed that Amy Winehouse was among the inspirations for the movie, which looks at the struggles of public figures.The director told Entertainment Weekly that he also consulted the media about Britney Spears when working on the sequel to 2022’s Smile – which was released today (October 18) – while Whitney Houston was also kept in mind.Discussing Naomi Scott’s character Skye Riley, a huge pop star who struggles with substance abuse, the death of her boyfriend, and physical and auditory hallucinations, he said, “I wanted to raise the question, did we do this to Skye?
By us coming back for a Smile 2, have we done this to her?”Finn explained that he wanted to take the sequel in an unexpected direction – in the first movie, Sosie Bacon played a therapist embroiled in a curse in which a mysterious entity inhabits victims, making them die by suicide.
Whoever witnesses the suicide becomes the entity’s next target.He continued, “When I started thinking about ideas, early on, any of the ideas that started coming to me in the first month I was thinking about it, I threw them away.
If I’m coming up with these too quickly, they’re too obvious; it’s too expected. I wanted to push for something where people would be like, ‘I can’t believe this is where Smile went.’”He found inspiration from “tragic” musicians, particularly those in the ‘27 Club’, like Winehouse, Kurt Cobain, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin and Jim Morrison.“Certainly, Amy Winehouse was on my mind.
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