Scott Derrickson sees “no justification” for Black Cellphone 3 except it may be “higher than the primary”.
The 59-year-old filmmaker has returned this month with a follow-up to his 2021 fashionable horror basic starring Ethan Hawke as The Grabber, however he is not dashing to develop the collection to a trilogy.
He informed Selection: “What I can say is that my perspective towards a sequel is that there’s actually no justification for making a sequel except you’re genuinely trying to make a film that’s higher than the primary film you’re making a sequel to.
“In case you’re going to make a 3rd one, it must be higher than the second, which is best than the primary one. Only a few movies do this.”
The director pointed to Evil Useless and Evening of the Residing Useless because the “solely two trilogies” to succeed.
He added: “Wanting again on the historical past of cinema, I feel Sam Raimi’s Evil Useless trilogy and George Romero’s Evening of the Residing Useless trilogy are most likely the one two trilogies of flicks the place they’re all three nice films and get progressively higher.”
The Black Cellphone 2 noticed The Grabber take a Nightmare On Elm Road-esque supernatural twist as he turned a risk from past the grave, however Derrickson has little interest in altering the character’s lore for the sake of it.
He defined: “What could be essential to me in contemplating any concepts is that it’s simply not a retread, and that we don’t really feel like we’re seeing, ‘Oh, now we set up this new rule for the Grabber. So let’s simply do this once more.’
“That’s the one factor I couldn’t do.”
Derrickson admitted he made a “very acutely aware” resolution to shift the tone for the sequel, significantly with the timing and placement, in addition to shifting on the characters of Finney (Mason Thames) and Gwen (Madeleine McGraw).
He mentioned: “A part of what was thrilling to me about ready till the children had been in highschool was {that a} highschool horror film calls for extra violence and extra scariness than a center college supernatural thriller, which is admittedly what The Black Cellphone is.
“When it comes to the influences, I recognised that I used to be making a film set in 1982, and that’s the period of all these summer time camp slasher films that had been following Friday the thirteenth.
“I watched dozens of these within the ’80s, and what I appreciated was the concept of doing that, however setting it within the winter camps that I went to within the Rocky Mountains. That’s not one thing I had seen earlier than.”
