‘Black Phone 2’ Mastermind Joe Hill on How He Came Up With The Grabber’s Return and What a Sequel Could Look Like

Spoiler Alert: This article contains very light spoilers about “Black Phone 2,” now playing in theaters.

The minute Joe Hill saw The Grabber’s mask, he knew “The Black Phone” could become a franchise.

“The mask was crafted by Tom Savini and Jason Baker,” Hill says. “I saw the mask with its swappable mouths: Sometimes the devil face is grinning, sometimes it’s frowning, and sometimes he has no mouth at all. I saw that mask and thought, ‘Oh, I think there’s gonna be a whole bunch of these movies.’ It struck me as instantly iconic in the way Freddy Krueger’s glove is iconic, in the way Michael Myers’ mask is iconic. I thought, ‘This is nightmare fuel, and people are going to want a lot of it.’ I thought he had the potential to become of these big, memorable ongoing horror villains, and if that’s going to be the case,…