Movies
‘Mr. Harrigan’s Phone’ – Stephen King Movie Coming to Netflix in October
An adaptation of one of the stories featured in Stephen King‘s recent four-novella collection If It Bleeds (2020), the feature film Mr. Harrigan’s Phone has received an official premiere date from Netflix this morning. Part of the streaming service’s Fall 2022 slate, Mr. Harrigan’s Phone will be ringing its way onto Netflix on Wednesday, October 5, 2022.
King recently tweeted, “I have seen a close-to-finished cut of Mr. Harrigan’s Phone, written and directed by John Lee Hancock, and it’s nothing short of brilliant.”
The upcoming movie comes from “American Horror Story” creator Ryan Murphy and Blumhouse, with John Lee Hancock (The Blind Side) writing and directing.
In Mr. Harrigan’s Phone, “When Craig, a young boy living in a small town (Jaeden Martell) befriends Mr. Harrigan, an older, reclusive billionaire (Donald Sutherland), the two begin to form an unlikely bond over their love of books and reading. But when Mr. Harrigan sadly passes away, Craig discovers that not everything is dead and gone and strangely finds himself able to communicate with his friend from the grave through the iPhone in this supernatural coming-of-age story that shows that certain connections are never lost.”
And as we learned more recently, Kirby Howell-Baptiste (“Barry,” “Killing Eve”) has joined the cast. “Howell-Baptiste will play Craig’s caring and concerned teacher, Ms. Hart.”
Joe Tippett, Cyrus Arnold, Colin O’Brien, Thomas Francis Murphy, and Peggy J. Scott also star.
Mr. Harrigan’s Phone is rated “PG-13” for “thematical material, some strong language, violent content, and brief drug material.”
Below, you can learn all about the original story by tuning into The Losers’ Club book episode on If It Bleeds. Our very own Stephen King podcast covered the collection upon its release in 2020.
It’s been eight years since Ari Aster came onto the scene and helped usher in a new wave of horror with Hereditary, one of the rare horror movies from the past ten years that still seems to come up in conversation every single week. And it’s back in the conversation this week, with Ari Aster revealing at an event that he’s already written a prequel to Hereditary!
Ari Aster was on hand at the American Cinematheque for Bleak Week: Cinema of Despair last week, a Los Angeles festival that screened all of Aster’s movies to date. The website Gold Derby reports that Aster revealed the Hereditary prequel script during a Q&A at the event, and you can watch the full Q&A conversation below for confirmation on the website’s report.
“I wrote a prequel to this,” Aster told the crowd, referring to Hereditary. “It never feels like the right time to do it. It’s a prequel, not a sequel so I don’t know where this goes.”
Would a potential Hereditary prequel dig deeper into the mythology of demon king Paimon? Unfortunately, Aster provides no further details on his prequel approach at this time.
Aster said of Hereditary during the same Q&A, “I was just trying to make a really good horror movie.” I think most horror fans would agree that he more than accomplished that goal, and the past eight years have proven that Hereditary is an enduring classic of its generation.
We celebrated the fifth anniversary of Hereditary here on BD back in 2023.
Ron Breton wrote, “Hereditary offers a similar emotional resonance to this new generation of horror – my generation of horror– as movie-goers in the seventies when they first saw Exorcist. Much like Aster’s film, we see the incomprehensible evil wear the face of a young girl; the victim of a raw deal she had no say in, as it tears a family to its core. Sure, both films offer so many terrifying visuals that can make the hair stand up on anyone’s neck – but it also depicts intense relationships and emotions that are tangible. Real. Familiar.”
“In that familiarity lies the uncanny, ready to rear its ugly head and force us to confront thoughts and horrors laying dormant and clawing at our psyche,” Breton continued his 5th anniversary celebration of Hereditary. “And it doesn’t matter if it’s been five or fifty years. These horrors are always there, as we become pawns in its horrible, hopeless machine.”
Toni Collette, Gabriel Byrne, Alex Wolff, Ann Dowd, and Milly Shapiro star in Hereditary. In the film, “A grieving family is haunted by tragic and disturbing occurrences.”
That’s putting it mildly, eh?!
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