Ahead of its world premiere at Fantastic Fest, Scott Derrickson has released the first poster for his upcoming film The Black Phone starring Ethan Hawke. The poster shows what looks to be Hawke underneath some white face paint and grotesque mask evoking Lon Chaney in London After Midnight.
Hawke is no stranger to the horror genre, with films like The Purge and Derrickson’s own Sinister included in his filmography. However, he usually plays a family man who wants to protect his children from whatever evils are lurking in the background. This certainly isn’t the case here. In The Black Phone, his mysterious character puts their lives in grave danger instead.
Adapted from a 2004 short story from Joe Hill, Hawke plays a kidnapper and murderer that wants to claim a young child named Finney Shaw (Mason Thames) as his next victim. While trapped in the basement, Finney discovers that the disconnected phone can transmit the voices of the murderer’s previous victims.
The Black Phone is currently poised to be the next big Blumhouse movie, screening at both Fantastic Fest and Beyond Fest. In an interview with Collider’s Steve Weintraub back in June, Blumhouse CEO Jason Blum described the film as “definitely one of the creepiest movies” the company has done yet. The first footage of the movie was also screened at last month’s CinemaCon, with Variety describing the footage as Derrickson “fully flexing in his comfort zone” of low-budget, high-stakes horror. To say that we are excited to see him return to horror after finding comic book movie success with Doctor Strange would be an understatement.
Check out the full poster for The Black Phone below. The film also stars Jeremy Davies, James Ransone, Madeleine McGraw, Jacob Moran, Jordan Isaiah White, and Brady Hepner. The Black Phone will have its world premiere tonight, September 25th, at Fantastic Fest before screening at Beyond Fest in October. The film will release in theaters on January 28th, 2022.