Black Phone 2 trailer confirms Hawke as Grabber, due Oct 17, 2025

Universal Pictures and Blumhouse released a new trailer this month for Black Phone 2, confirming that Ethan Hawke will reprise his role as the masked killer known as the Grabber and that the film will open in theaters on October 17, 2025. The followup to the 2022 hit updates the story with older protagonists, a winter camp setting and a supernatural return that, the marketing suggests, pushes the franchise further into outright horror.

Director and co-writer Scott Derrickson returns with collaborator C. Robert Cargill on the screenplay, adapting characters created by Joe Hill. Mason Thames and Madeleine McGraw are back as siblings Finney and Gwen Mason Thames. In the sequel Finney is 17 and struggling with life after his captivity, while Gwen, now 15, begins receiving calls from the titular black phone in her dreams and experiences visions of three boys being stalked at a winter youth camp called Alpine Lake. The siblings travel to the camp during a storm to investigate and confront a Grabber who, according to the film’s synopsis and the trailer, has grown more powerful in death.

Derrickson told attendees at a recent fan event that the original film functioned as a typical ghost...