I’ll admit, when I first heard Black Phone 2 was happening, I was skeptical. However, when I heard Joe Hill — whose short story inspired the 2022 Blumhouse hit directed by Scott Derrickson — was deeply involved, I became intrigued. Now, I know how involved he really was, and it’s incredible. The Locke and Key creator recently opened up about how the idea for the new horror movie came to him and why he decided it had to be on the 2025 release schedule. And honestly, it’s the kind of storytelling instinct you only get when the original author is still deeply invested in their creation.
During a recent interview on The Last Podcast on the Left, Hill revealed that the spark for the recently released The Black Phone 2 came not from studio pressure or franchise ambition, but from one small moment in the first film. Hill explained that Derrickson and C. Robert Cargill’s first book-to-screen adaptation, was mostly his work, but everyone brought something to it:
The Black Phone almost became a novel… I wrote fifty or sixty pages of it, but in the end, I didn’t have the nerve because I’d been turned down too many times… Scott Derrickson and Cargill, who co-wrote the first movie, really used everything from my short story… but that’s the first two-thirds of the film… everyone added something to it.
It’s that kind of creative overlap between novelist and screenwriter that makes The Black Phone such an effective adaptation. However, when Hill first saw the movie on the big screen, he says he immediately knew the story wasn’t over. He continued:
When I saw the film for the first time and I saw the mask — the mask Ethan Hawke wears — I was like, ‘Ah, there are gonna be like nine of these pictures,’… It’s like Jason’s hockey mask or Freddy’s glove, instantly iconic. People are gonna want more of this guy. Then the question is, are there any stories worth telling? Or are you gonna have to go full Leprechaun and send the Grabber to space?
The King Sorrow novelist didn’t have to go to space to find inspiration. Instead, he zeroed in on a single, seemingly minor detail from the first film. He recalled:
There’s this one little scene… and I thought, ‘Oh, there’s a trapdoor scene in that whole second half of the movie.’ I wonder if Scott and Cargill know they just put in this little piece — and your whole second movie is right there.’ So I worked up a pitch for them. I said, ‘I think this is what the second movie should be about.’ They didn’t know if they wanted to do another one, but they saw the pitch and loved it.
That kind of instinct to recognize story potential in a single visual choice is what makes Joe Hill’s involvement so exciting. Even the best horror franchises are typically born from financial success, not creative continuity. Honestly, most of the time, continuity is the last thing on anyone’s mind when it comes to greenlighting a sequel. Despite that, in this case, the writer who created the world is the one extending it, and it’s clearly paying off.
If you ask Hill’s father, who just so happens to be world class horror writer Stephen King, he’ll tell you The Black Phone 2 outshines the original, and CinemaBlend’s own Nick Venable agrees. In his review, he called the sequel “haunting” and “hypnotic.” It seems the writer who first imagined the ghostly Grabber had the right instincts for bringing him back. After all, as the new movie reminds us, in this world, “dead” is just a word.
The Black Phone 2 hit theaters on October 17 with a strong box office opening. Be sure to check your local listings to find showtimes near you. Also, be sure to stream the film’s 2021 predecessor now using a Peacock subscription.