Director Scott Derrickson says The Black Phone 2 will surprise viewers and has a more complicated script than the first movie
Back in 2021, Universal Pictures, Blumhouse Productions, and director Scott Derrickson brought us an adaptation of the Joe Hill short story The Black Phone (check out our review HERE) that appeared to tell a complete story that would stand on its own… but the film was made on a budget of around $16 million and earned over $160 million at the global box office. So, on October 17, 2025, we’ll be getting The Black Phone 2. Filming wrapped in January, and during an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Derrickson (whose new film The Gorge was released through Apple TV+ today) said that he’s aiming to surprise viewers with the Black Phone sequel, which is “more complicated” than its predecessor.
Derrickson wrote the screenplay for the first film with C. Robert Cargill, and Derrickson and Cargill have written the screenplay for The Black Phone 2 as well, with Derrickson returning to the helm. He and Cargill are also producing the sequel with Blumhouse’s Jason Blum and Ryan Turek.
Based on a short story by Joe Hill, The Black Phone centered on Finney Shaw, a shy but clever 13-year-old boy, who is abducted by a sadistic killer and trapped in a soundproof basement where screaming is of little use. When a disconnected phone on the wall begins to ring, Finney discovers that he can hear the voices of the killer’s previous victims. And they are dead set on making sure that what happened to them doesn’t happen to Finney. If you’d like to read the short story that The Black Phone is based on, it can be found in Hill’s collection 20th Century Ghosts, which you can buy HERE.
The sequel will see the return of Mason Thames (How to Train Your Dragon) as Finney Shaw, Madeleine McGraw (Secrets of Sulphur Springs) as Finney’s sister Gwen, Jeremy Davies (Justified) as their dad Terrence, and Miguel Mora, whose only previous credit is The Black Phone, as Robin, a friend of Finney’s who was killed in the first movie. Ethan Hawke (Moon Knight) is reprising the role of the child-killer known as The Grabber. New additions to the cast include Demián Bichir of The Hateful Eight and Arianna Rivas has joined the cast. Rivas previously had a supporting role in the comedy Prom Dates, which was released through the Hulu streaming service earlier this year, and has her first lead role in the upcoming Jason Statham action thriller A Working Man (formerly known as Levon’s Trade).
Derrickson told The Hollywood Reporter, “I didn’t feel obliged to make a sequel, but Joe Hill came up with an idea that I liked and it became the genesis of what we ultimately wrote. I then realized that if I made a big movie like The Gorge first, the [Black Phone] kids [Mason Thames and Madeleine McGraw] would be in high school by the time I finished. So I’d have a window of time with them in high school, and I could make a high school coming-of-age movie in the same way that the original was a middle school coming-of-age movie. They’re two very different kinds of movies. … [The Black Phone 2] is a much more complicated script. There’s a simplicity to The Black Phone, and while it’s not always easy to be simple, [The Black Phone 2] is not that. This one has a much more complicated world and idea, and it was thrilling to not repeat the first movie. The worst kind of horror sequel is the one where you try to do the same thing again, but just more of it. That goes for any sequel in any genre, frankly. So I knew I didn’t want to do that, and the best sequels are the ones that surprise you. They really venture into different territory altogether and offer you a fresh experience, even though you’re dealing with characters that you’ve grown to care about from the first film.“
What do you think of what Derrickson had to say about The Black Phone 2? Are you looking forward to going into different territory within the Black Phone world? Let us know by leaving a comment below.
