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WIKIPEDIA: The Black Phone is a 2021 American supernatural horror film directed by Scott Derrickson from a screenplay he wrote with C. Robert Cargill, based on the 2004 short story by Joe Hill. It stars Mason Thames as Finney, a teenage boy abducted by a serial child killer known colloquially as the Grabber (Ethan Hawke). When Finney encounters a mystical black rotary phone in captivity, he uses it to plot his escape by communicating with the ghosts of the Grabber's slain victims. Madeleine McGraw, Jeremy Davies, and James Ransone also feature in the principal cast. Derrickson and Cargill produced The Black Phone in association with Blumhouse Productions CEO Jason Blum. Universal Pictures oversaw the film's commercial distribution, and funding was sourced through a pact with Blumhouse and tax subsidies from the North Carolina state government.
IMDb SYNOPSIS: "After being abducted and locked in a basement, a boy starts receiving calls on a disconnected phone from the killer's previous victims."
STORYLINE: "Finney Blake is 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 no 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."
The idea of The Black Phone arose from Derrickson and Cargill's adaptation of the eponymous short story by Hill, found in 20th Century Ghosts. Derrickson struggled to produce additional ideas that supplemented the short story, shifting his attention to other filmmaking endeavors. The film remained dormant until he resigned from Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2022) over creative differences. Derrickson used his childhood experiences in suburban Denver, Colorado, to develop The Black Phone story. Principal photography began in February 2021 on a $16–18 million budget, and wrapped the following month. Shooting took place on sets and on location in Wilmington, North Carolina. Mark Korven composed the film's score, which drew on modern and vintage synthesizer sounds.
The Black Phone premiered at Fantastic Fest on September 25, 2021, and opened in US theaters after several delays on June 24, 2022. It was a box office success, grossing $161.4 million globally. The film received generally positive reviews from the critics, who praised its performances but were divided on its concept. The success of The Black Phone spawned the in-canon short film "Dreamkill", also directed by Derrickson and written by him and Cargill, released in 2023 as part of the anthology film V/H/S/85. A sequel, Black Phone 2, is scheduled for release on October 17, 2025.
THE MASK: Designing The Grabber's masks became a core goal, in part because Blumhouse Productions planned to showcase them in ads for the film. While the script detailed a prototype of two worn leather masks painted with a smiling and a frowning devil, this concept evolved when Derrickson proposed the addition of a mouthless mask. They convey despair, joy, and nihility in exaggerated form, reminiscent of tragic comic masks of ancient Greek theatre. Derrickson and Blumhouse producer Ryan Turek solicited five visual effects companies for the mask-making, including Callosum Studios, a Pittsburgh-based studio founded by prosthetic makeup artists Jason Baker and Tom Savini. Of the illustrations submitted, Callosum's most closely resembled the vision of the producers. Savini and Baker were engaged to handle the creation of up to 30 masks for gags, stunts, specific scenes, and pandemic mitigation, in a process that lasted a month. The approval of sketches took about two weeks, followed by the construction of pieces in about a day or two. The filmmakers drew on diverse material for reference, among them ceramic masks, circus masks, antique dolls, William Hickey's Coney Island Barker, the horror film Mr. Sardonicus (1961), and the exaggerated grin of Conrad Veidt's Gwynplaine in the silent film The Man Who Laughs (1928).
Derrickson imagined the mouthless mask after Hawke was hired, since he wanted the actor's face to be partially displayed in some of The Black Phone. He developed the design further by envisioning scenarios that examined The Grabber's motivations, his choice of masks in interactions with Finney, et cetera. The fully realized concept surfaced from Savini's original sketches, at which point the filmmakers began contemplating age, consistency, and the application of each mask. They constructed the pieces from moldings of procured life masks of Hawke's face, a task complicated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Callosum conducted the face casting sessions in Hawke's home office in New York because the actor was not comfortable traveling. They then sculpted masks from their Pittsburgh studio before returning to New York for test fittings. The finished pieces were created from a fiberglass-resin mixture paneled with felt and foam padding. As well, the filmmakers constructed replicas for stunts out of lightweight rubber and latex.
MUSIC: The Black Phone came to composer Mark Korven's attention once his agent and Blumhouse had correspondence. Derrickson outlined the film's pastiche musical approach in early conversations, calling for a score drawing on modern and vintage synthesizer-heavy sounds. Korven's objective was to tie together the music and subtext, chiefly themes of fear, confinement, and the perils of the human condition, to highlight The Grabber. He developed The Grabber's character motifs with abrasive strings accompaniments and friction noise produced from rubbing mallets on rough surfaces. The other characters were of minor focus except for "lighter, more feminine" tones for Gwen-centric scenes and a strings arrangement that accompanied the film's resolution.
RELEASE: The Black Phone premiered at Fantastic Fest on September 25, 2021. The film screened at the Aero Theatre in Santa Monica for the 9th Beyond Fest that October and, in the next year, headlined New Orleans' Overlook Film Festival as the event's closing title. It finished its festival itinerary at the 2022 Tribeca Festival, part of the fest's late-night lineup. Universal Pictures released The Black Phone in US theaters on June 24, 2022, after delaying the film twice from its scheduled early 2022 release. The studio's marketing campaign promoted the viewing experience rather than the film's actors or story elements. They began the promotional cycle in August 2021 with a trade show exhibit at CinemaCon, where the first teaser trailer debuted. The official trailer was released in October 2021. Derrickson unveiled the theatrical release poster in conjunction with The Black Phone's Fantastic Fest premiere, sporting the tagline, "Never talk to strangers."
HOME MEDIA: Universal released The Black Phone on digital formats on July 14, 2022, Blu-ray and DVD on August 16, and 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray on October 3, 2023. Physical copies contain deleted scenes, behind-the-scenes analyses about production, cinematography and The Grabber, and a short film titled Shadowprowler. It was the third-best selling DVD and Blu-ray release in its first week of US sales, selling 34,985 copies and earning $855,633. The Black Phone is also available to authenticated subscribers of NBCUniversal's streaming service Peacock.
RECEPTION: The Black Phone was considered a surprise box office success, as studios anticipated meager profits for theaters screening lower-budget films, closed as a consequence of COVID-19 pandemic control measures. The film finished its theatrical run grossing $90.1 million in the United States and Canada (55.8% of its earnings) and $71.3 million internationally (44.2%), for a global total of $161.4 million. Of this figure, $67.8 million was estimated to have been yielded by Blumhouse and Universal in net profit, factoring in advertising, production, interest, administrative overhead, residuals, and miscellaneous costs.
CRITICAL RESPONSE: The Black Phone opened to mostly favorable reviews. On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 81% of 271 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 7.0/10. The website's consensus reads: "The Black Phone might have been even more frightening, but it remains an entertaining, well-acted adaptation of scarily good source material." Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 65 out of 100, based on 38 critics, indicating "generally favorable" reviews.
SEQUEL AND RELATED MEDIA: Hill pitched Derrickson follow-up ideas examining The Black Phone characters as early as June 2022. Derrickson discussed the possibility of a sequel further while embarking on the press tour for The Black Phone. The film's success led to immediate negotiations that August, and by October 2023, Universal commissioned The Black Phone 2 with a scheduled release date of June 27, 2025. Derrickson and Cargill will resume their screenwriting duties, while Hawke, Thames, McGraw, Davies and Mora are expected to reprise their roles. In May 2024, Universal postponed The Black Phone 2's theatrical release by four months, to October 17, 2025, after commissioning several new Blumhouse films for the calendar year.
The Black Phone canon was expanded further in the anthology short film "Dreamkill" for V/H/S/85, released on Shudder on October 6, 2023. "Dreamkill" occurs seven years after the events of The Black Phone, and explores the life of Gwen's cousin Gunther (Dashiell Derrickson)...read more at WIKIPEDIA.org
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