For months now, we’ve been looking forward to the next film from director Scott Derrickson – his supremely creepy-looking horror film The Black Phone, based on a Joe Hill short story, which was pushed back to a primetime summer slot earlier this year amid strong early buzz. But while we wait for the dial tone to connect on that one, Derrickson has already locked in his next project – a film called The Gorge.
The film, according to Deadline will be a “high-action, genre-bending love story”, and is being produced at Skydance, who picked up the script from Zach Dean – writer of Chris Pratt’s recent time-travelling, alien-fighting movie The Tomorrow War. The screenplay featured on the annual Black List, which compiles all the most promising, not-yet-produced scripts of that year, back in 2020.
While The Black Phone marks Derrickson’s return to the all-out horror that sparked his career – with the likes of Sinister and The Exorcism Of Emily Rose – The Gorge may be more of a move back to blockbuster territory. Given Derrickson directed the first Doctor Strange movie (before parting ways on Multiverse Of Madness), we know he can handle stuff on that scale – and the reality-disrupting, city-folding aesthetic he established for Strange might be a good indicator of the kind of “genre-bending” in store.
Stay tuned for more on The Gorge as the project gathers steam, and prepare to catch The Black Phone this summer, scaring up a storm from 24 June.