Is The Black Phone Real? Inside the Serial Killer Who Inspired The Grabber
The Black Phone isn’t a true story—but the terror is. Scott Derrickson’s smash-hit draws The Grabber from real-life predators, blurring fiction with chilling facts.
Ever since Scott Derrickson turned The Black Phone into a sleeper scare machine (twice), people keep asking the same thing: is it based on a true story? Short answer: no. Longer answer: it borrows just enough from real life to feel like someone is breathing on your neck.
So what is The Black Phone actually based on?
The bones of it come from a 2005 short story by Joe Hill (yes, Stephen King is Dad), which gave Derrickson the Grabber and the supernatural hook. The skin and bruises came from Derrickson himself. He grew up in North Denver, in a working-class, half-Mexican, half-white neighborhood that, by his own account to the New York Times, saw a lot of violence. When he was eight, a kid from next door knocked on his door and said his mom had been murdered. That kind of real-world dread soaks the film even though the plot is fiction.
The Grabber: built from nightmares you recognize
Hill has said (to Vanity Fair) that the Grabber was stitched together from infamous movie monsters and real American boogeymen. The inescapable reference point: John Wayne Gacy, the 1970s serial killer who murdered at least 33 boys and sometimes performed at parties as Pogo or Patches the Clown, which earned him the nickname 'The Killer Clown.' That awful detail helped inspire Stephen King’s Pennywise and later bled into Hill’s short story.
On the page, the Grabber is an overweight man who dresses like a clown. When it came time for the movie, Derrickson cut the clown. Two reasons: Pennywise had just stormed back into theaters, and Derrickson wanted Ethan Hawke for the role, which pushed him to rethink the character’s whole look. He told IGN he started fresh with the mask and built a new aesthetic around Hawke’s performance. The magician vibe you see in the film isn’t random; it’s a deliberate pivot to avoid clown overlap while keeping the same Gacy-level chill.
How the movies performed
- The Black Phone (2021) — Directed by Scott Derrickson; 81% on Rotten Tomatoes; $161 million worldwide.
- The Black Phone 2 (2025) — Directed by Scott Derrickson; 71% on Rotten Tomatoes; $128 million worldwide.
Given that run, it’s no shock people are asking about a third movie. Derrickson hears you, but he’s not racing to stamp out a Part 3 just to keep the lights on.
Derrickson on Black Phone 3: only if it levels up
Speaking with Variety after Black Phone 2’s strong theatrical showing, Derrickson said he’s open to returning, but there’s one non-negotiable: it has to be better, not just more.
What I can say is that my attitude toward a sequel is that there’s really no justification for making a sequel unless you are genuinely attempting to make a movie that’s better than the first movie you’re making a sequel to. If you’re going to make a third one, it needs to be better than the second one, which is better than the first one. Very few films do that.
Translation: unless he finds a story with new scares and real emotional punch, there’s no Black Phone 3. If he does, he’s in.
Where to watch
The Black Phone is streaming on Peacock. The Black Phone 2 is available to rent or buy on Prime Video.