By MICHAEL GINGOLD
The hypothetical double sequel would be a family affair.
Universal and Blumhouse’s BLACK PHONE 2 opened this past weekend and grossed $27.3 million, outdoing estimates and the debut of the first PHONE. It looks likely another adventure with the Grabber will follow, and star Madeleine McGraw has one idea of how she’d like it to play out.
In BLACK PHONE 2, McGraw returns to the role of Gwen, now a teenager still beset by nightmares of the Grabber’s murderous exploits. She and her brother Finney (Mason Thames) travel to a wintry Christian camp in an attempt to determine how to stop him. (See our review here.) Revisiting a role she previously played as a preteen put McGraw in a similar situation to her sister Violent, who reprised Cady in M3GAN 2.0 earlier this year. While speaking with RUE MORGUE, McGraw says she and her sibling definitely compared notes about their respective projects.
“We talked about our movies a lot,” she recalls, “though at the same time, I tried to keep as much hidden from her as possible when it came to BLACK PHONE 2, because I wanted her to be surprised. But I came to set on M3GAN 2.0, so I kind of knew what was going on. I would say Gwen and Cady are similar in a lot of ways. They’re tough and resilient and not afraid to speak their minds. I think they’d be good friends if they met each other.”
And that could happen, considering both franchises dwell under the Universal/Blumhouse umbrella. McGraw is all for that idea: “Violet and I always talk about that! It would be so cool. Kind of random, and we’d have to figure out a solid plotline of why that would happen, but yeah, I think it’d be really, really fun.”
