Ethan Hawke Has Two Movies Opening The Same Day (And They Couldn't Be More Different)

Whether by sheer coincidence or the result of two different studios conspiring to engineer the strangest double feature for moviegoers in big cities, two very different movies both starring Ethan Hawke opened on October 17, 2025.

"Black Phone 2," the sequel to the terrifying 2022 horror hit "The Black Phone," is playing nationwide. Hawke's serial killer character, The Grabber, died at the end of the first film, but, as his ghost announced in the film's trailers, "dead is just a word." His spirit now haunts Finney (Mason Thames) and Gwen Blake (Madeleine McGraw), the siblings who defeated him the first time around, in dreams a la Freddy Krueger in the "A Nightmare on Elm Street" series. The sequel explores the mysterious killer's backstory, with the unrested souls of his first victims drawing him out of Hell and back to Earth.

Hawke also plays the more sympathetic real-life character of Broadway lyricist Lorenz Hart in "Blue Moon," now playing in select theaters in New York and Los Angeles and expected to roll out to theaters nationwide starting October 24. This Richard Linklater-directed dramedy takes place roughly in real time over the night of March 31, 1943, at the afterparty for the opening night of "Oklahoma!" Hart's longtime composer Richard Rodgers (Andrew Scott) has left Hart to partner with Oscar Hammerstein II (Simon Delaney) on this musical hit, which Hart finds too cheesy and sentimental for his tastes. Through conversations with various partygoers and staff, the film paints a portrait of Hart's big ego, sharp wit, fear of abandonment, and desire for love in many forms.

Ethan Hawke spends almost all his screentime in "Black Phone 2" behind The Grabber's trickster mask. The magician-like facade the character put on in the first film is completely gone this time around, leaving nothing but undisguised rage and hatred behind. Hell, he explains, removes all that's human from a soul, turning it into pure evil. The result is a film that Audrey Fox's review for Looper calls "the scariest dreamscape since 'Nightmare On Elm Street.'"

Where "Black Phone 2" goes over the top in pursuit of scares, "Blue Moon" is a smaller, subtler work. With its contained setting and emphasis on dialogue, it could almost work as a stage play — except on stage, they couldn't do those "Hobbit"-style forced perspective effects to make Hawke appear 10 inches shorter than he is in real life, and then we'd likely miss out on one of the year's best performances. Hawke is getting well-deserved Oscar buzz for his turn as Hart, delivering great dirty jokes while sympathetically depicting the sadness of a man desperate to be wanted  — by his former collaborator whose tastes have shifted in different directions, by the 20-year-old college girl (Margaret Qualley) he feels "irrational admiration" for despite his well-known preference for men, and by the attention of the theatre-going public. Broadway geeks will particularly enjoy all the historical Easter eggs sprinkled throughout.

These two new Ethan Hawke films couldn't be more different from one another in genre, style, or the characters Hawke plays. Watch them back-to-back and you'll be amazed it's the same guy in both roles (and if you want to know more about this talented actor's background, check out Looper's feature on the untold truth of Ethan Hawke).