Ethan Hawke Wants to Go to Hell for Black Phone 3
Ethan Hawke is not ready to hang up the mask just yet and is interested in making Black Phone 3. With Black Phone 2 now haunting cinemas and already dialing in an impressive 2.6 million dollars from Thursday night previews, talk of a third chapter in Scott Derrickson’s chilling saga is heating up fast. And if there is a trip back into The Grabber’s world, the man behind the mask wants front row seats on the ride to hell.
Speaking with Entertainment Weekly, Hawke shared that he is absolutely open to returning for Black Phone 3, and his ideas for where the story could go are as twisted and fascinating as fans might hope. “Genre is a great place to play, and every genre is kind of a sequel in a way because you are building off such preexisting expectations,” Hawke said. “I would like to go to hell with the Grabber. That is what I would like to do. I would like to get to know him. That would be my dream for the third one, to let it be a character piece about what made him, who he is now, and how he is haunting other people’s dreams.”
For an actor famously reluctant to dive into sequels, Hawke’s enthusiasm is telling. “I am just not into them because so often they turn into corporate money grabs,” he admitted. “But Scott really wanted to push himself with Black Phone 2. It is so innovative and creative, and Scott is flexing his muscles with the movie. I was so impressed by how not of a corporate money grab the film is. It is clearly a film with something to say. It is pushing boundaries. It surpasses the first film. I would say it is a sequel the way Road Warrior is a sequel to Mad Max. It is more complicated, bigger budget, but it is spiritually evolving.”
That spiritual evolution has not gone unnoticed by fans or by us. We gave Black Phone 2 a solid four out of five knives in our review, praising Derrickson’s bold decision to transform a grounded supernatural thriller into a full blown nightmare epic. The sequel leans heavily into dream logic, psychological terror, and 80s horror DNA, channelling the dread of A Nightmare on Elm Street while maintaining Derrickson’s eerie, personal touch.
As we noted, Black Phone 2 is not exactly a scary movie, but it will appease horror fans for creating a spooky story with a memorable antagonist and some gory set pieces. The film expands the world of Joe Hill’s original short story without losing the emotional weight that made the first film resonate. It also deepens The Grabber’s mythos, turning him from a creepy figure in a basement into a dream haunting phantom who just refuses to die quietly.
The official synopsis for Black Phone 2 offers a glimpse into that continuing nightmare. “The Grabber seeks vengeance on Finn from beyond the grave by menacing Finn’s younger sister Gwen. As Finn, now seventeen, struggles with life after his captivity, the headstrong fifteen year old Gwen begins receiving calls in her dreams from the black phone and seeing disturbing visions of three boys being stalked at a winter camp known as Alpine Lake. Determined to solve the mystery and end the torment for both her and her brother, Gwen persuades Finn to visit the camp during a winter storm. There, she uncovers a shattering intersection between The Grabber and her own family’s history. Together, she and Finn must confront a killer who has grown more powerful in death and more significant to them than either could imagine.”
It is easy to see why Hawke might be tempted to pick up the phone one more time. The Grabber, already one of horror’s most iconic villains of the past decade, seems destined to become a recurring nightmare figure, part ghost story and part psychological specter. And if Black Phone 2 is any indication, Derrickson and Hawke still have plenty of dark material to mine from the dial tone of the afterlife.
So, will Black Phone 3 take us straight to hell? If Hawke has his way, we might just need to answer that call.
