Scott Derrickson and C. Robert Cargill will soon work on remaking The Night of the Hunter.
Scott Derrickson has his next project lined up. Tuesday, it was revealed the Doctor Strange helmer would soon tackle a reimagining of The Night of the Hunter. A cinema classic some might say is one of the best films ever released, Derrickson is directing the remake of the picture while writing the script for it alongside frequent collaborator C. Robert Cargill.
Charles Laughton’s original 1955 film—an adaptation of a 1953 novel donning the same name—was added to the United States National Film Registry in 1992. The film and novel features a conman who pretends to be a preacher to get close to a family in order to steal their money. Work on the film will likely take place after Derrickson and Cargill wrap work on The Black Phone 2, the project the duo is currently working on now.
Given the original Black Phone was based on a short story, it’s yet to be seen what plot a sequel could follow. Joe Hill, the author behind the aforementioned short previously teased an exciting, all-new story for Ethan Hawke’s Creeper.
“There have been some really, really good conversations about a sequel. And the thing is, as soon as I saw the mask, which was designed by Tom Savini and Jason Baker, as soon as I saw the mask I thought, ‘If this film is a hit, there’ll be a sequel,’ because the mask is so iconic,” Hill admitted to ComicBook.com in 2022 about a sequel. “It is like Freddy Krueger’s glove, it is like Michael Myers’ mask, it is this thing where it’s the imagery, iconic imagery, that haunts people’s sleep. And, look, in horror, guys like Jason Voorhees and Freddy Krueger, and Frankenstein, and Dracula, none of these guys stay buried. They all claw their way out of the grave for a sequel and then a threequel.”
He continued, “There have been talks about how to do a sequel that wouldn’t suck. How to do a sequel that doesn’t cheapen the film that came before, that’s still scary, that’s still intense, that feels organic. And those conversations have been pretty good. But if I were to provide any details, Scott and [writer C. Robert] Cargill would lock me in the basement in the film, and that’s it. And the phone doesn’t work. As you know, the phone doesn’t work. I can’t call anyone to get out. So I would decline to offer any real granular details about the possible sequel.”
The Black Phone is now streaming on STARZ while The Black Phone 2 is set to hit theaters on June 27, 2025. The original The Night of the Hunter film can be seen on Tubi.