Universal and Blumhouse are currently developing a sequel to The Black Phone – and we’re trying to figure out how that would work.

Director Scott Derrickson’s adaptation of the Joe Hill short story The Black Phone was well-received by critics and the general audience alike. 83% of the reviews listed on Rotten Tomatoes are positive, and more importantly it earned over $161 million at the box office on a budget that was just under $20 million. The Black Phone doesn’t lend itself to being sequelized, the story stands on its own and is wrapped up by the time the end credits start rolling… but when something is as successful as this movie was, that opens the sequel door. And at CinemaCon last month, The Black Phone producer Jason Blum (founder of Blumhouse Productions) confirmed that they’re planning to make a follow-up. So now we have to take a moment to ponder… The Black Phone 2: Could a sequel work?

Before we get started, a reminder of what The Black Phone was all about. Mason Thames starred as Finney Shaw, a shy but clever 13-year-old boy, who is abducted by a sadistic killer and trapped in a soundproof basement where screaming is of little use. When a disconnected phone on the wall begins to ring, Finney discovers that he can hear the voices of the killer’s previous victims. And they are dead set on making sure that what happened to them doesn’t happen to Finney. Madeleine McGraw had a memorable role as Finney’s sister Gwen, who has psychic visions in her dreams (just like their mom did), and Ethan Hawke played the mask-wearing child killer known as The Grabber.

HERO SEQUEL

With The Grabber having been defeated, the most appealing option for a sequel to The Black Phone would be one that follows up with Finney and Gwen a few years after the events of the first film and sees them getting mixed up in some other kind of horrific situation – maybe even one they’re led into by Gwen’s psychic abilities. She could have psychic dreams about someone who needs help, and when she and her brother try to provide that assistance, they find that their lives are in danger as well. The scenario would be up to the screenwriters to figure out, but this approach would give viewers the chance to see Mason Thames and Madeleine McGraw play Finney and Gwen again, and that alone would be enough to make a sequel worthwhile.

ANTHOLOGY SEQUEL

Here’s a less appealing option, and one we’d be more likely to see if Universal Pictures were to decide to turn The Black Phone into a direct-to-video franchise. Which is certainly a possibility, as Universal loves to pump out direct-to-video sequels. (Look up the Tremors, Bring It On, Dragonheart, American Pie, Scorpion King, Death Race, and Chucky franchises for proof.) The anthology approach would introduce a whole new cast of characters. No Finney or Gwen, no Grabber. Instead, we’d follow other people who find themselves in a life-or-death situation and get help from beyond, just like Finney getting his supernatural phone calls while he was stuck in The Grabber’s basement. We could get a whole series of “Black Phone” movies that are only connected to each other by the set-up of spirits helping people out of a bad spot. Perhaps that would be a welcome alternative a simpler version that would strictly be seen as The Black Phone 2.

VILLAIN PREQUEL

The Grabber was such a memorable villain, both in look (wearing his multi-piece mask that was designed by FX legend Tom Savini) and performance (Ethan Hawke is awesome), would Universal and Blumhouse want to leave him out of a sequel? They could try to build this guy up into a new horror icon… and it might seem in poor taste to make someone who abducts and murders children an icon, but that’s exactly what Freddy Krueger did before he became a dream stalker. To bring The Grabber back as a flesh and blood character, they’d have to make a prequel. Which would probably turn out to be a really dark and depressing movie, because there’s no way to get around it having a downer ending where The Grabber gets away with his crimes.

GRABBER RETURNS

Speaking of Freddy… Another way to bring The Grabber back and try to build him into a horror icon would be to turn him into a supernatural being who continues messing with children from beyond the grave. He could target a new batch of victims, or the idea of a supernatural Grabber could be mixed with the idea of focusing on Finney and Gwen. Maybe his evil spirit is still lingering around the siblings. Maybe they have to find a way to vanquish him, or maybe he just appears to them in their dreams and visions while they deal with a different situation. Either way, it’s difficult to imagine this approach working out in the long run, because it doesn’t seem like “Play a Horror Icon in Multiple Sequels” would be on Ethan Hawke’s To Do list. If they make The Black Phone 2, don’t expect him to be in it.

Do you have any ideas for how a sequel to The Black Phone could work? Let us know by leaving a comment below.

Chris Pratt couldn’t help but make a sex joke about the statue James Gunn has in his office of Peter Quill.

With the arrival of Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 comes the continued press tour. And with that comes plenty of behind-the-scenes stories that have been amusing, bittersweet and even a little perverted. As it turns out, James Gunn has a life-size replica of Chris Pratt (as Peter Quill/Star-Lord) in his office–something Pratt couldn’t help but make a risque joke about.

During a joint interview with IGN, Chris Pratt said of the 35-pound statue in James Gunn’s office, “It looks exactly like me, it’s very eerie,” to which the director replied, “I had it my office for a long time and people would come in and scream…” This would prove to be wording that Pratt just couldn’t pass up pointing out. “They’d do what in it and scream?”

James Gunn was oblivious to Chris Pratt’s joke at first, but after some prompting, the two fell into a fit of uncontrollable laughter. Gunn played along, saying. “I let everybody have a crack at ol’ plastic Quill!” Pratt took it further, as he tends to do, capping off the bit with, “It’s really important that it looks exactly like Chris and he’s asleep with his mouth open.” You can watch the clip below:

THE STORY: A corrupt American cop (Michael Douglas) and his partner (Andy Garcia) wind-up in Japan after a prisoner exchange gone awry. With their former captive cutting a swath through the local Yakuza in an attempt to establish himself as the new Tokyo boss, the cops are forced into an uneasy alliance with a by-the-book local police inspector (Ken Takakura).

THE PLAYERS: Starring: Michael Douglas, Andy García, Ken Takakura, Kate Capshaw and Yusaku Matsuda. Directed by Ridley Scott. Music by Hans Zimmer.

THE HISTORY: Michael Douglas was riding high in 1989. Following his Oscar-win for Wall Street, and Fatal Attraction’s boffo box office, his was considered one of the most bankable actors in Hollywood. Opting for a rare action role, grittier and more hard-edged than his turns in Romancing the Stone and The Jewel of the Nile, Douglas, with his Fatal Attraction producers Stanley Jaffe and Sherry Lansing (who would soon run Paramount Pictures), hired Ridley Scott, then on a career downswing following Legend and Someone to Watch Over Me, to helm this stylish East-meets-West thriller, which would shoot on-location in Japan.

I remember when Ridley showed us the first cut of the movie it was about two hours and forty minutes, and it was extraordinary… But, this was his first cut, and so we all new that he was going to go in and make the film under two hours. I mean, the texture of the movie, the performances, the visuals, the sound, we were thrilled. Then, Ridley called us back, I dunno, four weeks later and showed us a movie that was an hour and fifty minutes long. We looked at him and asked, “what did you do,” and he said, what do you mean “what did I do?” “You took out all the good stuff, why did you make it this?” He said, “but I had to,” and he DID have to, to make it under two hours he had to take out some of the texture and some of the finest scenes in the movie. So, we said, “just make it the right length, it doesn’t have to be under two hours, just make it the right length.” (note- the final cut runs 125 minutes) – Sherry Lansing (BLACK RAIN DVD).

Despite critical acclaim and Douglas’s star-power, Black Rain was only a modest hit upon its release in the fall of 1989. It grossed $46 million, decent enough numbers for the era, but it wound-up grossing far less than comparable action movies of the time, although worldwide it was a solid hit, grossing an additional $88 million, while it also became a hot rental on the VHS market.

Nowadays, Black Rain remains popular among aficionados of eighties action cinema, with it remaining Michael Douglas’s one real attempt to make an action-movie on par with what Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger were doing at the time. Sandwiched between Douglas’s more well-known vehicles, with Basic Instinct another giant hit just a few years later, and coming along at a fallow time in Ridley Scott’s career, it remains a movie rarely discussed in examinations of either’s career.

WHY IT’S GREAT: Black Rain is an eighties gem for many reasons. For one thing, Michael Douglas aces his anti-hero part. While introducing him by staging a motorcycle race is maybe trying a bit too hard to establish him as a sexy rebel, it’s notable that his character, Nick Conklin, is allowed to be sleazy and imperfect. He’s under investigation for being on-the-take, and while, with another actor in the lead, he’d eventually be vindicated, we learn early-on that Nick is in-fact guilty. He’s also shown to be a racist, making derogatory comments about the Japanese, and often screwing up his own investigation with a mixture of ego and fool-headedness, all of which eventually gets his partner, played by the great Andy Garcia, killed.

I remember when the picture first came out, there was a very influential critics who called it a racist film because of how it depicted the Japanese. This really bothered me, so I called him up and asked him, “have you ever been to Japan?” Silence..”no.” “Then what do you think you’re talking about?” Then a few weeks later, it gets nominated for best foreign film in Japan. A very respected critic said, “well, this is the best Japanese film I’ve seen this year,” so it was a real compliment to Ridley. – Michael Douglas (BLACK RAIN DVD)

Lest you think he’s unlikable, Douglas makes Nick three-dimensional, to the point that even if we know he’s not too far removed from the baddies he chases, he’s essentially a good man, and his evolution is convincing. His relationship with Ken Takakura’s more honorable Japanese cop, himself a victim of the rigid class system in Japan, is touching. Douglas initially treats him like a joke, but he comes to realize Takakura (who’s one of the biggest stars in Japanese history – on the level of someone like Chow Yun-Fat in Hong Kong) is truly on his side, and an honorable man.

Meanwhile, Yusaku Matsuda’s bad guy is among the scarier ones of the eighties, sporting a crazed look and sense of sadism. Matsuda was, unbeknownst to the filmmakers and Douglas, terminally ill at the time. He apparently knew it would be his last role, and he put everything he had into it. Likewise, Ridley Scott, who one might assume would phone-in what, to him, might seem like a routine assignment, infuses Black Rain with oodles of style. His vision of Tokyo seems almost as futuristic as the Los Angeles of Black Rain, and his eye, matched with Jan De Bont’s cinematography and Hans Zimmer’s amazing, hard-edged score, makes this one of the most impeccably made action films of the era.

BEST SCENE: In cop movies, the younger, more inexperienced partner is always going to die. Even as a child watching Black Rain, I had seen enough of these movies to know Andy Garcia was doomed. As an action-junkie you almost look forward to the partner dying, because it’ll kick the hero into high gear. But, Garcia is so damn likable and charismatic, singing Ray Charles with Takakura (who apparently loved Garcia off-screen) and busting Douglas’s balls that you want him to pull through. All of this makes his eventual death all the more hard-hitting, with it being, in the annals of action movie murder, one of the most sadistic.

SEE IT: Black Rain is easily available on DVD/Blu-ray (I actually have it on HD-DVD), streaming, iTunes, Amazon and more.

You know, people always ask me in my career, what’s your favorite movie. And I have to say, Black Rain is right up there for the unique qualities of the movie, the execution across the board… – Michael Douglas (BLACK RAIN DVD)

PARTING SHOT: Black Rain is another entry into this column that many of you may remember having seen when it came out. If it’s been awhile, I urge you to check it out again, as it holds up really well. And to those younger readers who may have never heard of it, do you like Ridley Scott and Hans Zimmer? If yes, boy oh boy will you love this.

Something bigger than Vecna, the WGA strike, has forced the fifth and final season of Stranger Things to stop production.

Stranger Things has become the latest victim of the Writers Guild of America strike, as production on the final season has been turned upside down. The Duffer Brothers took to Twitter to let their fans know that due to the strike, which officially began on May 2nd, filming would have to be halted.

Filming on the fifth and final season of Stranger Things was set to begin next month, but with the strike now in full swing, there is no telling just when cameras will roll. This could also push back the streaming debut, although an original date was yet to be announced anyway. With the eerie and foreboding season four finale suggesting that Hawkins is headed for its darkest times yet, fans will have to hang on that cliff a little while longer.

In their statement last week, the WGA wrote, “Though we negotiated intent on making a fair deal – and though your strike vote gave us the leverage to make some gains – the studios’ responses to our proposals have been wholly insufficient, given the existential crisis writers are facing. We must now exert the maximum leverage possible to get a fair contract by withholding our labor. Members of the Negotiating Committee, Board and Council will be out with you on the picket lines.” The Hollywood Reporter notes that “the guild is seeking viewership transparency from streamers, increased wage floor, and protections against mini-rooms and the use of artificial intelligence.” The strike will at least give David Harbour some time to take a break from his diet of cheeseburgers.

Stranger Things joins an ever-growing list of productions that have been slowed due to the strike, including Marvel’s Blade, Netflix’s Cobra Kai and HBO’s House of the Dragon.

This is the first WGA strike since the one in 2007-2008. That strike, which lasted over three months, had a tremendous impact on the film and television world, with projects in the Bond, X-Men and Transformers franchises falling victim in one way or another, while TV saw dozens of shows seeing episodes cut, seasons refocused and staff fired. Still, the longest strike in WGA history was in 1988, lasting 153 days…And that, boys and girls, is how we ended up with the atrocious rushed script for Halloween 4.

How do you feel about Stranger Things joining the list of content being affected by the Writers Guild of America strike? Give us your take on the situation in the comments section below.