The Black Phone Director Scott Derrickson Speaks Out on Prequel Plans

Warning: this story contains spoilers for The Black Phone, now streaming on Peacock. Will Scott Derrickson answer the call for a Black Phone 2? The supernatural Blumhouse horror reunites the Doctor Strange director with his Sinister co-writer C. Robert Cargill and star Ethan Hawke, who plays a masked child abductor called The Grabber. When 13-year-old Finney (Mason Thames) is locked in the killer’s soundproof basement, he receives calls on a disconnected black phone from the Grabber’s deceased victims. But the part-time magician who makes neighborhood children disappear doesn’t pull a Michael Myers vanishing act and get away: the Grabber dies when Finney snaps his neck with the phone cord. 

Audiences hoping to see the Grabber return in a Black Phone prequel or sequel “feel that way because he’s so fascinating and they want to know more,” Derrickson told DiscussingFilm. “It’s the same reason why people watch true crime documentaries, because they want to know more, especially about serial killers.”

“I’ve watched dozens of serial killer documentaries because I want to know more about the serial killers, you know, what makes these strange anomalies tick? What makes these monsters do what they do? Of course, in many cases, there is no answer,” Derrickson said, referencing real-life serial killers like Richard Ramirez and Jeffrey Dahmer. 

While The Black Phone hints at the Grabber’s own traumatic childhood and his experience growing up in his family home, Derrickson says the mysterious backstory is part of why Hawke’s villain grabbed moviegoers’ attention. 

“I think that when it comes to sociopathology and true psycho killers, part of what makes them interesting is their otherness and the fact that there is no story that could explain the mystery of what it is that they do. And I think the best villains that we’ve seen in genre filmmaking don’t try to reduce them to some backstory that explains why they are the way they are,” he said. “Why is Heath Ledger’s Joker [in The Dark Knight] the way he is? He tells us three or four stories about how he got those scars – probably none of them are true. Maybe one of them is true? The point is, we’ll never know and that just adds to his mystery.”

Derrickson continued, “If Hannibal Lecter had a story that said, ‘This is why he became a cannibal and started eating people.’ Suddenly, Hannibal Lecter wouldn’t be that interesting. So when people say they want more, good, I want them to want more. You know, that’s the mystery of this kind of sadistic killer.” 

Part of that mystery is the Grabber’s compulsion to hide behind his pale, demon-like mask, which could be grounds for his return.

“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,” Joe Hill, author of the short story that inspired the movie, told ComicBook. “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.” 

Hill added: “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.” 

The Black Phone is now available to stream on Peacock or own on Blu-ray, DVD, and Digital HD.