How ‘Black Phone 2’ Resurrected the Grabber

Any hit movie will naturally lead to talk of sequels—especially hits horrible movies, racking up multiple entries thanks to the genre’s affection for that franchise. But in the case of 2021 black phoneThe story hits a fantastic climax when the kidnapped Finny (Mason Thames) uses everything he’s learned from his ghostly allies and defeats the Grabber (Ethan Hawke) once and for all. except, He didn’tbecause Black phone 2 is Opens in theaters today. how that happen?

Director Scott Derrickson, who originally didn’t plan a sequel, revealed the tantalizing pitch he received from Joe Hill—the author of the original short story the first film was based on. The Hollywood Reporter: “The Grabber summons Finn from Hell.’ And I was like, ‘Oh, Grabber’s on the other line. Of course, it’s great, and it opens up a lot of possibilities.’ the supernatural possibility

Grabber’s connection to Finny (known as Finn in the sequel, now he’s a bit older) and his sister, Gwen (Madeleine McGraw) — beyond the events of the first film, that is — is a new revelation in the sequel that we won’t spoil here. But the twist is something that helped Derrickson get more heads to expand the story.

“It made me think about the possibilities of the story in a way that I couldn’t really stop. Now that it’s done, it’s a big enough revelation in a movie that doesn’t have a lot of twists and turns … and knowing that we’re going to build towards it in some form, it gave us an emotional backbone for the film,” he said. “The hardest thing in the process of creating the rest of that backbone was how to engage Grabber and bring him back from the dead in a scary way and into these kids’ lives. So it took a lot of time and effort and discussion to figure out how we were going to do that.”

THR asked if a third film could be on the way black phone trilogy, and Derrickson didn’t rule it out, though he did say, “I haven’t spent any time thinking about a third movie. I think it’s important not to.”

He continued, “Once you’re trying to make a sequel and expand into a cinematic universe, you’re inevitably, by definition, limiting the possibilities of the story. So I didn’t think about it. I really wanted to make this movie, and my goal was to make a better movie than the first one. So I didn’t consider that it couldn’t really enter my mind and it couldn’t be anything. Yet.”

Black phone 2 Now in theaters.

Want more io9 news? See when the latest is expected Marvel, Star WarsAnd Star Trek What’s next for the release? The DC Universe in Film and TVAnd everything you need to know about its future Who is the doctor?.