Scott Derrickson will soon be heading back to the director’s chair. After directing the critically acclaimed The Black Phone, franchise producer Ryan Turek tells us Derrickson will, in fact, be the director behind The Black Phone 2.
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“Yeah, Scott’s coming back,” Turek tells us. “I think it’s too early to talk about anything else regarding that, but yeah [Derrickson’s returning].”
Derrickson told us in October he’d only return if Ethan Hawke would also return, suggesting the actor will be returning as The Grabber despite his apparent death in the closing moments of the original film.
“It’s possible. It’s not a definite thing, but if it does become definite, you’ll be the first to hear,” Derrickson told us at the time. “I can tell you this much, I wouldn’t make a Black Phone sequel without Ethan. I don’t think there’d be any point in doing that.”
Joe Hill, the author of the short story the first film is based on, told us last year there’s been substantial talks regarding the content of the second film and how to continue the story.
“There have been some really, really good conversations about a sequel. And the thing is, as soon as I saw the mask, which was designed by Tom Savini and Jason Baker, as soon as I saw the mask I thought, ‘If this film is a hit, there’ll be a sequel,’ because the mask is so iconic,” Hill admitted to ComicBook.com in 2022 about a sequel. “It is like Freddy Krueger’s glove, it is like Michael Myers’ mask, it is this thing where it’s the imagery, iconic imagery, that haunts people’s sleep. And, look, in horror, guys like Jason Voorhees and Freddy Krueger, and Frankenstein, and Dracula, none of these guys stay buried. They all claw their way out of the grave for a sequel and then a threequel.”
He continued, “There have been talks about how to do a sequel that wouldn’t suck. How to do a sequel that doesn’t cheapen the film that came before, that’s still scary, that’s still intense, that feels organic. And those conversations have been pretty good. But if I were to provide any details, Scott and [writer C. Robert] Cargill would lock me in the basement in the film, and that’s it. And the phone doesn’t work. As you know, the phone doesn’t work. I can’t call anyone to get out. So I would decline to offer any real granular details about the possible sequel.”
The Black Phone 2 is set for release on June 27, 2025. The original film is now streaming on Peacock. This interview was conducted in support of Night Swim, which hits theaters on January 5, 2024.
