Yahoo Movies The real-life killer inspiration behind The Black Phone
The Black Phone 2 is bringing Ethan Hawke's terrifying serial killer back to screens in 2025, and there's a real-life element to this horrific character.
Every few years, a horror movie comes out of nowhere to become a box office hit. Sometimes, if a studio is really lucky, they'll create a new horror icon out of their villain as well. That's certainly what happened with The Black Phone and its creepy, masked killer The Grabber — played by Ethan Hawke.
The Black Phone earned $161m (£127m) at the worldwide box office and we now know that a sequel will arrive in October 2025, just in time to dominate Halloween. Somehow, much like Palpatine, Ethan Hawke is expected to return.
But as with many classic horror films, there are elements of reality in The Black Phone and it certainly has the feel of a true story, aside from the supernatural side of things. So let's explore just how real this movie actually is and what those inspirations are.
Is The Black Phone based on a true story?
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The source material for director Scott Derrickson in The Black Phone was twofold. First, the idea of The Grabber and the supernatural elements came from a 2005 short story by Joe Hill — son of horror legend Stephen King.
However, Derrickson crafted the film's grubby neighbourhood based on his own childhood in North Denver. He wanted to build up the atmosphere of a world where horrific violence could lurk behind every closed door.
As he explained to the New York Times: “It was a working-class, kind of blue-collar neighbourhood, half-Mexican, half-white. There was a lot of violence — everybody got whipped by their parents, there was fighting on the way to school, on the way home from school, at school.”
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In a separate interview, Derrickson told one particularly horrifying story that explained just how present violence was in his life.
He said: "When I was eight years old, my friend next door came knocking at my front door and said: 'Somebody murdered my mum'. The mother of my friend next door was murdered. And there was a lot of domestic violence, even in my own home and in the homes of a lot of these kids that I knew."
But that's not to say that Derrickson threw everything at the story, admitting to TIME that there were "things in my childhood that were too dark to put in". It's hard to think of anything more horrible than The Grabber.
Is The Grabber based on a real serial killer?
Read more: The Black Phone's Ethan Hawke: 'I want to go where the audience is' (Yahoo Entertainment)
In the original short story version of The Black Phone, The Grabber is an overweight man who dresses as a clown. The clear inspiration for this character was the real serial killer John Wayne Gacy, who committed at least 33 murders in the 1970s.
Gacy became known as "The Killer Clown" due to the fact he regularly performed as clown characters called Pogo and Patches during the years he was committing his murders. He would refer to sick "magic tricks" during the time he was taunting and torturing his victims.
This element of a macabre game forms part of The Grabber's character in The Black Phone, but there were some big changes, moving the Gacy inspiration into the background.
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Derrickson and screenwriter C Robert Cargill decided to make the connection less explicit when it came to adapting Hill's story. The success of the It movies at the box office meant that Derrickson didn't want to try to take them on in the evil clown arena.
He told IGN: "Obviously, I didn't want him to be a clown after It. And I really wanted Ethan, so I didn't want this fat, overweight character. And so I sort of started with the mask and Ethan from scratch, and I wanted to try to design a look and an aesthetic and a manner for The Grabber that was very unique from Joe's story."
Read more: Ethan Hawke says it was 'awesome' to work with Scott Derrickson on The Black Phone (BANG Showbiz)
So while The Black Phone isn't officially based in reality, it was definitely inspired by very real horror, whether that's the violence of Derrickson's childhood or the terrifying crimes of one of America's most evil serial killers.
It remains to be seen whether The Black Phone 2 will similarly draw inspiration from real life. But we're expecting another violent, shocking and genuinely scary horror movie.
The Black Phone is streaming on Netflix in the UK and on Starz in the USA.
