Writer, of The Black Phone, Joe Hill had to make some big changes in order to switch things up from that of Stephen King’s It. It turns out that Hill’s killer character, “The Grabber” was originally going to be a part-time clown.
At the time, Hill wasn’t certain when It was going to be released, so it became a huge deal. he didn’t want It in theaters at the same time as The Black Phone – especially with both killers being clowns in some capacity. So, it was at that point that Hill made The Grabber into a magician.
“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,” Hill told Screenrant. “He still was a part-time clown in the film, in the screenplay, which was kind of a natural evolution, because the character somewhat echoes the crimes of John Wayne Gacy. But I read the script and, I can’t remember if IT had come out at that point or was just about to come out, and I said, ‘Guys, I don’t think he can be a part-time clown, not with Pennywise about to explode on the American consciousness. I just think there’s room for only one deadly clown. So what if we made him a part-time magician instead?’”
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That is a huge change from what Hill originally wanted but I can appreciate the change-up especially to change any and all resemblance to anything that King and Hill may have had crossed over.
The synopsis for The Black Phone goes like this:
Finney Shaw is a shy but clever 13-year-old boy who’s being held in a soundproof basement by a sadistic, masked killer. When a disconnected phone on the wall starts to ring, he soon discovers that he can hear the voices of the murderer’s previous victims — and they are dead set on making sure that what happened to them doesn’t happen to Finney.
The Black Phone is currently available on Blu-ray.
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