How ‘The Black Phone’ Author Joe Hill Inspired Scott Derrickson to Make ‘Black Phone 2’

Director/co-writer Scott Derrickson has publicly credited The Black Phone author Joe Hill with sparking the idea for Black Phone 2, but he remained tight-lipped as to what exactly the concept entailed.

In his audio commentary that accompanies the sequel on home video, Derrickson opens up about how a reveal that recontextualizes the original film drew him to the sequel.

“The first film was very successful, and people immediately wanted me to make a sequel. The studio called, I think, the Monday after the box office weekend. The opening numbers came in, and it was a hit, and they wanted to know if I’d make a second one,” Derrickson recalls.

“I was not terribly interested in the idea at first, and Joe Hill sent me an email with an idea about The Grabber calling Finn and a backstory that involved him being the killer of Gwen and Finn’s mother. That latter part was something I had never thought about,” he explains.

“I had thought about making a sequel where The Grabber’s the ghost. That was interesting but not enough to make me want to do the movie,” Derrickson continues. “But the backstory about the mother was really fascinating to me and I thought could really allow for the creation of some interesting emotional arcs for these two kids.”

He adds, “Once I glommed onto that idea, then what hit me and really made me ultimately decide to make a sequel to The Black Phone was the realization that if I didn’t make a sequel right away the way the studio wanted me to and instead waited for three years, Madeleine McGraw and Mason Thames would be in high school. They would be old enough to play high school kids, and that makes it a very different kind of movie.”

When the scene with the mother comes up, Derrickson expands on its impact.

“I thought [Hill’s idea] could be very powerful as a reveal for audiences who loved the first one — to find out that this traumatic event that wrecked the life of Terrance and disrupted the household of Finn and Gwen, to find out that that was actually not true. She didn’t kill herself. I thought that had some staying power.”

Black Phone 2 is available now on 4K Ultra HD, Blu-ray, DVD, and Digital.

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