Ethan Hawke and Scott Derrickson have already made some memorable nightmares together, and it sounds like the pair have another one brewing.
The duo first worked together on Sinister, the 2012 horror movie that cast Hawke as a true-crime writer who discovers something deeply disturbing while researching his latest book. They reunited nearly a decade later for The Black Phone, with Hawke trading the role of a desperate father for the much more sinister part of the Grabber, and Derrickson returning to direct its 2025 sequel, Black Phone 2.
In a recent interview to discuss his upcoming film The Weight — a Depression-era thriller in which Hawke plays a father who joins a dangerous gold-smuggling expedition in hopes of reuniting with his daughter — Polygon asked the actor whether he had any interest in making more horror movies. And the answer was a mysterious “yeah.”
“I don’t have agendas like that about what kind of movie, really. I like people,” Hawke said. “Yeah, Scott and I are working on something right now. I think he’s so gifted. I like working with him.”
Hawke didn’t offer any details about what that “something” might be, but his comments open up an intriguing question for horror fans: Is the duo getting ready to return to one of their previous nightmares, or are they cooking up something entirely new?
A new nightmare — or an old one?
The most obvious possibility is Black Phone 3. Black Phone 2 brought Hawke’s Grabber back from the dead and expanded the supernatural mythology surrounding the franchise, while also earning a positive reception from critics. The series certainly has more room to explore, particularly after the sequel established that the Grabber’s influence could extend well beyond his original reign of terror.
There’s reason to not read too much into that possibility, though. Derrickson and writer C. Robert Cargill were deliberately noncommittal about a third movie when Black Phone 2 premiered last year. In an interview with Polygon at Fantastic Fest last fall, Derrickson said they hadn’t even had a conversation about Black Phone 3, while Cargill said they would need a compelling enough idea to justify returning to those characters.
There’s also Sinister, which gave Hawke and Derrickson their first horror collaboration. Hawke led the original as true-crime writer Ellison Oswalt, but didn’t return for 2015’s Sinister 2, which was directed by Ciarán Foy and fared poorly with critics, earning just a 14% critics’ score on Rotten Tomatoes.
Of course, Hawke and Derrickson could simply be cooking up an entirely new story altogether. For now, we’ll have to wait and see what the pair have in store.
The Weight releases in theaters on Sept. 18.