The Black Phone director and co-writer Scott Derrickson has previously acknowledged that author Joe Hill played a key role in igniting the idea for Black Phone 2, but until now, the filmmaker has kept the specifics largely under wraps.

In the audio commentary included with the sequel’s home video release, Derrickson offers new insight into what ultimately convinced him to return to the story—and how a single concept helped reframe the original film in a powerful way.

According to Derrickson, the success of the first film immediately put sequel pressure on the creative team.

“The first film was very successful, and people immediately wanted me to make a sequel,” Derrickson recalls. “The studio called, I think, the Monday after the box office weekend. The opening numbers came in, and it was a hit, and they wanted to know if I’d make a second one.”

Despite the enthusiasm, Derrickson admits he wasn’t initially interested in continuing the story. That changed after an email from Joe Hill.

“I was not terribly interested in the idea at first, and Joe Hill sent me an email with an idea about The Grabber calling Finn and a backstory that involved him being the killer of Gwen and Finn’s mother,” Derrickson explains. “That latter part was something I had never thought about.”

Derrickson had considered other sequel directions—including making The Grabber a ghost—but none felt compelling enough on their own.

“I had thought about making a sequel where The Grabber’s the ghost. That was interesting but not enough to make me want to do the movie,” he says. “But the backstory about the mother was really fascinating to me and I thought could really allow for the creation of some interesting emotional arcs for these two kids.”

Another factor that sealed the deal was timing. Derrickson realized that waiting too long would fundamentally alter the nature of the sequel.

“Once I glommed onto that idea, then what hit me and really made me ultimately decide to make a sequel to The Black Phone was the realization that if I didn’t make a sequel right away the way the studio wanted me to and instead waited for three years, Madeleine McGraw and Mason Thames would be in high school,” he says. “They would be old enough to play high school kids, and that makes it a very different kind of movie.”

When discussing the pivotal reveal involving the children’s mother, Derrickson elaborates on why Hill’s idea resonated so strongly.

“I thought [Hill’s idea] could be very powerful as a reveal for audiences who loved the first one—to find out that this traumatic event that wrecked the life of Terrance and disrupted the household of Finn and Gwen, to find out that that was actually not true,” Derrickson explains. “She didn’t kill herself. I thought that had some staying power.”

Black Phone 2 is available now on 4K Ultra HD, Blu-ray, DVD, and Digital.