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Ethan Hawke reunites with “SINISTER” director on “THE BLACK PHONE”

Thursday, January 28, 2021 | News

By MICHAEL GINGOLD

The actor joins Jeremy Davies, Mason Thames and Madeleine McGraw in the Blumhouse production.

Having previously played the haunted true-crime writer in Scott Derrickson’s SINISTER, Ethan Hawke has now taken a role in Derrickson’s THE BLACK PHONE, which the director wrote with C. Robert Cargill based on Joe Hill’s short story. The movie is set to roll in North Carolina next month for Universal release; Derrickson, Cargill and Jason Blum are producing, with Hill as an executive producer. The story, which appeared in Hill’s 20TH CENTURY GHOSTS collection, is synopsized thusly: “Imogene is young and beautiful. She kisses like a movie star and knows everything about every film ever made. She’s also dead and waiting in the Rosebud Theater for Alec Sheldon one afternoon in 1945… Arthur Roth is a lonely kid with big ideas and a gift for attracting abuse. It isn’t easy to make friends when you’re the only inflatable boy in town… Francis is unhappy. Francis was human once, but that was then. Now he’s an eight-foot-tall locust and everyone in Calliphora will tremble when they hear him sing… John Finney is locked in a basement that’s stained with the blood of half a dozen other murdered children. In the cellar with him is an antique telephone, long since disconnected, but which rings at night with calls from the dead…”

Michael Gingold
Michael Gingold (RUE MORGUE's Head Writer) has been covering the world of horror cinema for over three decades, and in addition to his work for RUE MORGUE, he has been a longtime writer and editor for FANGORIA magazine and its website. He has also written for BIRTH.MOVIES.DEATH, SCREAM, IndieWire.com, TIME OUT, DELIRIUM, MOVIEMAKER and others. He is the author of the AD NAUSEAM books (1984 Publishing) and THE FRIGHTFEST GUIDE TO MONSTER MOVIES (FAB Press), and he has contributed documentaries, featurettes and liner notes to numerous Blu-rays, including the award-winning feature-length doc TWISTED TALE: THE UNMAKING OF "SPOOKIES" (Vinegar Syndrome).