Ethan Hawke says it was 'awesome' to work with Scott Derrickson on The Black Phone

Ethan Hawke says it was “awesome” to work with Scott Derrickson again.

‘The Black Phone’ star loved working again with the 55-year-old director on the horror flick – which is based on a short story by Joe Hill about a group of missing children – after they had a “great experience” collaborating on 2012’s ‘Sinister’.

The 51-year-old actor told Screen Rant: It was awesome. ‘Sinister’ was a great experience; I think it was great for him too. It was an important movie in my career. It was my first horror movie, and I was turning 40. Scott kind of reinvigorated my love of genre movies, and I learned a lot from him.”

Ethan called the two movies “siblings in a way” despite their differences.

He said: “Now, to get to work with him again… The movies are kind of siblings in a way. But, ‘Sinister’ is extremely dark; there’s just a darkness to that movie. [The Black Phone], while being incredibly terrifying, has a tremendous amount of love in it. It’s less cynical. You’re watching this brother and sister look after each other in a malevolent world and save each other.

The ‘Reality Bites’ star labelled it now the “time to play a villain” after typically opting to not play the baddie but trusted Scott to make it “worth it”.

Ethan continued: “When he first sent the script, I was like, ‘Listen, I’m so excited that you’re sending me something that I want to say yes.’ But he was telling me the character he wanted me to play, and I was like, ‘I’m never going to want to play that part. I’ll read the script, but I’m never going to play that part.’ But then I read it, and I thought it was so well-written, so well-made. It was just well conceived, and I thought, “Well, maybe it is time to play a villain.

I normally never felt inclined. I just didn’t want to invite that kind of energy into my imagination; I just didn’t want to. But then I thought, ‘With Scott, he’ll do it really well. It’ll be worth it.’”