A couple of days before the September 30, 2022 release, actors from the film showed up at various baseball games, sitting behind home plate dead still and smiling while staring into the camera, unmoving despite fans in the audience being understandably concerned, while wearing Smile shirts. Another soon appeared in the background with the crowd during the Today show.
The smiles in the film are all natural and not enhanced with visual effects. The studio even asked if they could be tweaked, but Parker Finn stuck to his guns as he wanted them to be grounded in their creepiness.
Paramount originally planned for the film, which had a low budget of $17 million, to be a streaming-only release on Paramount+. The film was screened for test audiences and scored much higher than anticipated, prompting Paramount to give the film a theatrical release in the United States. It grossed $22 million over its opening weekend, which Paramount's distribution chief Chris Aronson said "exceeded our wildest expectations." The film ended up grossing $217 million worldwide.
Parker Finn told the actors who would be smiling in the film that he wanted "dead eyes that do not match an incredibly uncomfortable wide tooth-bearing smile, that it was meant to feel predatory in nature."
The film was originally titled "Something's Wrong With Rose" before being renamed "Smile."