‘Smile 2’ director Parker Finn will only make a follow-up if he can find a way to "tell really intense and hopefully thoughtful character stories".

The recently-released horror sequel - which stars Naomi Scott, Ray Nicholson, Kyle Gallner and Lukas Cage - has impressed both audiences and critics as well as putting in a respectable box office performance and the 37-year-old filmmaker has revealed he will consider making another entry in the series so long as he can "really invest intimacy into the storytelling".

During an interview with Collider, he said: "Well, I will say this, I think there are a lot of interesting roads that any future ‘Smile’ could go down. For me, I love all the stuff that goes bump in the night, and all the really frightening things of the big concept of ‘Smile’ and the Smiler.

"But really, for me, ‘Smile’ is a vehicle to tell really intense and hopefully thoughtful character stories, and so I’d wanna make sure, regardless of if more than one person might have it, that we still find a way to really invest intimacy into the storytelling. That’s super important to me. But I think there are some really interesting tricks still up the sleeves of ‘Smile’."

‘Smile 2’ follows the pop mega-star Skye Riley (Naomi Scott) as her life begins to unravel after a haunting smile figure takes the form of her former partner Paul (Nicholson) and torments her.

As well as teasing possible sequels, Parker previously said he believed the ‘Smile’ franchise could "tell all different kinds of diverse stories" in possible future instalments.

Speaking with The Hollywood Reporter ahead of the film’s release earlier this month, the moviemaker explained: "There’s so many exciting roads that ‘Smile’ could go down.

"We’ll have to see how audiences react to ‘Smile 2’, but I think that’s what’s great about ‘Smile’ is there’s an opportunity to tell all different kinds of diverse stories and sort of place ourselves in different worlds that Smile then comes in and invades."