James Ransone reuniting with Derrickson & Hawke for The Black Phone
Scott Derrickson’s adaptation of Joe Hill’s The Black Phone continues to shape up to be a full-on Sinister reunion as James Ransone (IT: Chapter Two) has signed on to star in the Blumhouse-produced film alongside Ethan Hawke, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
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Based on the 2004 novella of the same name from Joe Hill, who will also executive produce the film, the logline for the source material reads as follows:
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.
Click here to purchase Hill’s novella and Derrickson, Hawke and Ransone’s first collaboration Sinister!
Hawke is set to star in the film as the kidnapper of the children while Mason Thames is set to star as the main young boy, Jeremy Davies (Justified) as the boy’s father and Madeleine McGraw set as the sister and Ransone’s role currently being kept under wraps, aside from the name Max.
In addition to directing the project, Derrickson is adapting the story with frequent collaborator C. Robert Cargill, both of whom will be reuniting with Blumhouse following their fan-favorite 2012 box office hit horror film Sinister starring Ethan Hawke, which the two wrote together and Derrickson helmed. The film’s box office success spawned a sequel the two wrote together but handed the directorial duties off to Ciaran Foy, though it would see lower box office returns and was panned by critics and audiences alike.
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Derrickson and Cargill will produce the project via their Crooked Highway Productions banner alongside Jason Blum for his eponymous production banner, while Universal and Blumhouse will distribute. Black Phone has also already begun building its cast as Mason Thames (For All Mankind) and Madeleine McGraw (Toy Story 4) have both signed on to star in the film.