Joe Hill talks about how Scott Derrickson’s adaptation of TheBlackPhone switched up The Grabber’s story in the wake of IT’s success with Pennywise.
According to The Black Phone author Joe Hill, some aspects of the story had to be changed for the film adaptation due to IT's Pennywise. Hill's story was adapted by Scott Derrickson and C. Robert Cargill, the writing team behind Sinister and Doctor Strange, with Derrickson also serving as director. Stephen King is the reigning champion of having his work adapted; one of his magnum opuses, It, having been adapted twice successfully.
SCREENRANT VIDEO OF THE DAY Both actors' versions of Pennywise, an ancient form of supernatural evil who mainly manifests as a circus clown, have captured audiences' imaginations and become horror icons. The Black Phone's source of terror, The Grabber, having only debuted this summer, has arrived on the scene to stake his own claim as a truly memorable force.
"I had one big creative contribution, which is — I don't know if we want to get down in the weeds. I had one big creative contribution, which was when I read the first draft, it was very, very faithful to the story and, in the short story, when Finney is kidnapped by The Grabber, the guy introduces himself as a part-time clown.
Clowns have been ubiquitous in the horror genre, thanks in large part to King and Pennywise. While evil performers of magic such as wizards and warlocks have certainly appeared in horror films or horror-adjacent movies such as the very Evil Dead-esque MCU sequel Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness, creepy magicians are a surprising rarity. Especially magicians who don't have any actual magical capabilities.
Hill's call was definitely the right one as audiences crave novelty, and if the adaptation had stayed as faithful to the source material as its first draft, audiences might not have flocked to The Black Phone out of scary clown fatigue. Plus, taking away that aspect paved the way for The Grabber's unsettling mask, which allowed Derrickson and Hawke room to visualize the character's morphing psychological state, as well as show the different levels of his "ritual.
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