(from left) Ethan Hawke and director Scott Derrickson on the set of Black Phone 2. Universal Pictures and Blumhouse Share on Facebook Share on X Share to Flipboard Send an Email Show additional share options Share on LinkedIn Share on Pinterest Share on Reddit Share on Tumblr Share on Whats App Print the Article Post a Comment Logo text Scott Derrickson has finally pressed the redial button. Until now, the filmmaker had never made a sequel to one of his own films. And despite The Black Phone being one of 2022's most profitable pictures, he still wasn't looking to helm another chapter. After all, he'd completely exhausted Joel Hill's short story of the same name, and his 13-year-old hero, Finney Blake (Mason Thames), had slayed the child-abducting serial killer known as The Grabber (Ethan Hawke). But that all changed when Hill sent Derrickson a tantalizing pitch via email for Black Phone 2. Related Stories Person of Interest You Can't Scare 'Black Phone 2' Star Mason Thames Out of a Good Role Movies 'Black Phone 2' Review: Ethan Hawke Returns for More Virtuoso Demonic Tormenting in an Effective Horror Sequel "[Joe Hill] got the ball rolling by saying, 'The Grabber calls Finn from hell.' And I was like, 'Oh, The Grabber is on the other line. Sure, that's great, and it opens up a lot of possibilities,'" Derrickson tells The Hollywood Reporter in support of Black Phone 2's Oct.17 theatrical release. The other story point that got Derrickson's gears turning is really a two-part revelation in the middle of the movie. The specific details are sectioned off in the interview below, but the North Denver native knew he needed a compelling swerve to bridge the wider story being told across two Black Phone installments. "That idea was surprising to me and surprisingly interesting to me. It's a big enough reveal in a movie that doesn't have a lot of twists and turns. That's the big twist, really, if there is one," Derrickson shares. "And knowing that we were going to build toward that in some form, it gave us an emotional spinal cord for the movie." Derrickson was now committed to making Black Phone 2, but he still exercised restraint. Instead of striking while the iron was hot like his studio partners hoped, he opted to make an action romance called The Gorge first so that his two young stars, Thames and Madeleine McGraw, would be high schoolers by the time he finished. The timing would yield a high school coming-of-age movie as a follow-up to his middle school-set predecessor. Black Phone 2's story resumes four years later in 1982, and while Finney, now Finn, is relatively famous for being the kid who killed The Grabber, it's brought him a lot of unwanted attention that he has to resolve with his fists. Psychologically, he's an even bigger mess, and he routinely numbs himself with some of North Denver's finest low-grade cannabis. Meanwhile, Gwen (McGraw) is dealing with her own issues. She's being bullied at school due to the fact her psychic gifts that helped solve The Grabber case are no longer a secret. She's also sleepwalking and having vivid dreams about The Grabber and a winter camp called Alpine Lake. Ultimately, Finn and Gwen take a trip to Alpine Lake to investigate the camp, and that's where The Grabber's malevolent spirit seeks his revenge. But instead of prioritizing Finn, he targets Gwen in her dreams as payback for Finn's role in the death of his idiot brother, Max (James Ransone). The nature of this plot effectively turns McGraw into the de facto lead actor. "In this movie, the roles are really reversed. [Gwen's] the one in peril, and [Finn] spends his time trying to be her protector," Derrickson says. "What Gwen is dealing with is much more complicated, so it needed to be her story in order for that to play out in any kind of meaningful way." Below, during a recent conversation with THR, Derrickson also discusses whether he intends to make a college-era trilogy capper, before diving into his first feature collaboration with his composer son, Atticus Derrickson. *** Finn (Mason Thames) and The Grabber (Ethan Hawke) in Scott Derrickson's Black Phone 2. Robin Cymbaly/Universal Pictures/Blumhouse You weren't planning to make a sequel until Joe Hill emailed you a follow-up idea to his original source material. That's right. I assumed he pitched The Grabber (Ethan Hawke) going after Gwen (Madeleine McGraw) in her dreams, but that wasn't his starting point, was it? No, it wasn't. He had a much more elaborate pitch, most of which I didn't use. Like you said, I wasn't thinking about a sequel at all. I didn't feel any obligation to do one, and I don't know that I was even interested in doing one. But he got the ball rolling by saying, "The Grabber calls Finn from hell." And I was like, "Oh, The Grabber is on the other line. Sure, that's great, and it opens up a lot of possibilities." The studio was asking me to make a sequel right away, but I realized that if I waited a couple of years and let these kids get olde