2021's The Black Phone was a horror hit, adapting the story by Joe Hill, the son of legendary horror writer Stephen King. And though the impending sequel The Black Phone 2 isn't based directly on another Hill story, the author was instrumental in inspiring director Scott Derrickson and screenwriter Robert Cargill to make a second movie at all.
Derrickson and Cargill have opened up about the road to creating The Black Phone 2 in an interview with Bloody Disgusting, explaining that it was Joe Hill who initially gave them the hook for The Black Phone 2, when they weren't even sure they'd make another film in the series.
"He just said, 'A phone rings, Finney answers, and it's The Grabber calling from hell'," Cargill says.
Derrickson ran with the concept from there, which follows from the first Black Phone movie in which Finney (Mason Thames) is kidnapped by a serial killer named The Grabber (Ethan Hawke), navigating his captivity with help from a mysterious black phone that receives calls from beyond the grave.
"The first starting point for me was, where are we going to set this? I was proud of how the first movie really recreated my experience in North Denver in this working-class neighborhood in 1978," Derrickson explains.
"Then, the idea of making it a camp movie, putting it in camp, but not summer camp, winter camp, which I went to as a teenager," he continues. "And the cold violence of that kind of environment, the Rocky Mountains in winter at night, where it gets down to 60, 70-below, the wind chill factor, and the memories I have of that camp experience, that became very interesting to me because I felt like I hadn’t seen that. We've seen lots of summer camp horror. 1982 set winter camp? Interesting."
The Black Phone 2 releases in theaters on October 17. For more, check out our list of the best horror movies, or keep up with upcoming horror movies heading your way.
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