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 .

“[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 H

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