The Black Phone 2 director says he didn’t actually want to make a sequel, but his mind was changed by a short-and-sweet phone call from Stephen King’s son Joe Hill

2021’s The Black Phone was a horror hit, adapting the story by Joe Hill, the son of legendary horror writer Stephen King. And though the impending sequel The Black Phone 2 isn’t based directly on another Hill story, the author was instrumental in inspiring director Scott Derrickson and screenwriter Robert Cargill to make a second movie at all.

Derrickson and Cargill have opened up about the road to creating The Black Phone 2 in an interview with Bloody Disgusting, explaining that it was Joe Hill who initially gave them the hook for The Black Phone 2, when they weren’t even sure they’d make another film in the series.