Author Joe Hill’s debut short story collection 20th Century Ghosts spawned its first adaptation with The Black Phone, leading viewers to wonder which of his tales should make it to the big screen next. Joe Hill’s impressive career as a horror author has seen the author publish numerous novels, short story collections, and comic books. However, only one of the writer’s stories has been turned into a movie, with the rest of Hill’s efforts being translated to small-screen adaptations.

However, the Ethan Hawke horror movie The Black Phone earned impressive reviews in June 2022, which could mean that audiences are in store for more big-screen Hill adaptations in the near future. The Black Phone is based on the short story of the same name from Hill's debut collection, although the movie’s feature-length runtime meant that director Scott Derrickson added a lot more plot to the brief source story. With The Black Phone's impressive success, it is only a matter of time before writers, directors, and studios start to look through Hill’s collection for other potential projects.

Related: Everything We Know About The Black Phone 2

However, anyone looking to make a quick buck off the back of Hill’s 20th Century Ghosts may leave the library dismayed by what they find. There is a reason that it took over ten years for Hill’s story “The Black Phone ” to be adapted, as the tale is as strange and un-commercial as much of the collection it is housed in. "The Black Phone"’s biggest issue is the story’s overwhelming bleakness, which the movie ameliorates by not setting the entire story within the confines of a child killer’s basement. Similarly, many of the stories found in Hill’s acclaimed debut are too weird, too dark, too sparse, or too ambitious to make it to the multiplex next, meaning only a select few could potentially be the next big hit like The Black Phone.

Best New Horror

Ghostface in Scream 2022

Probably the Joe Hill story best suited to a movie adaptation, “Best New Horror” is a clever meta-horror that manages to balance self-referential humor with serious chills. Like the Scream franchise's influential meta-slashers, the Hill story is more concerned with scares than comedy, adding a layer of dark ironic humor to an otherwise deeply creepy story. “Best New Horror” tells the tale of a horror magazine editor who becomes obsessed with a mysterious manuscript that is sent in for his consideration, eventually tracking down the author only to find… Exactly what a seasoned horror fan might expect him to find. What makes the story so compelling is that, while he follows the manuscript’s enigmatic author from an abandoned, rundown apartment to a dark backwoods road and into deep forests late at night, the editor is seemingly aware of the danger he is in and how foolhardy his decisions are. This self-awareness makes the story all the more unsettling, and it is easy to picture The Black Phone star Ethan Hawke nailing the central role.

Pop Art

Joe Hill

Like his famous father, Stephen King, whose best stories sometimes defy adaptation, some of Hill’s ideas are too ambitiously weird to translate easily to the big screen. For example, despite being the acclaimed story that essentially launched Hill’s career, “Pop Art” could be tricky to bring to life in movie form. “Pop Art” is the poignant tale of an inflatable boy’s brief life and, while surreal and involving on paper, its ambitious premise might not translate to the screen (although it could work as an animated adaptation). In classic magical realism fashion, “Pop Art” never explains how its hero was born as a sentient human balloon, and this adult fairy tale approach could alienate mainstream viewers despite the tale’s moving impact.

Abraham’s Boys

Bill Paxton with an axe and his sons in Frailty.

While Netflix’s First Kill proved vampires (and their slayers) are as popular as ever with audiences, it is nonetheless unlikely that “Abraham’s Boys” will be the next Hill adaptation to hit cinema screens. A dark twist on Dracula, Abraham’s Boys has one famous character’s conflicted teenage sons trying to work out whether their father is a “real” vampire hunter or just an unhinged murderer killing innocent people he sees as “vampires.” This one relies too much on its central twist (who the vampire killer is) and is much too close to 2000’s underrated psychological thriller Frailty to sustain a full-length movie adaptation.

Related: Every Victim Of The Grabber In The Black Phone

The Cape

A shot of Brandon using his heat vision

A deeply unsettling twist on the normal superhero story wherein the worst person imaginable gains access to superpowers, an adaptation of “The Cape" would be perfectly timed to cash in on the superhero trend. While everything from The Boys to Invincible to Rick & Morty’s upcoming spinoff show The Vindicators is busy mining dark humor from comic book tropes and superhero storytelling conventions, only 2019’s Brightburn tried to parlay this genre subversion into outright horror. Unlike that underwritten effort, “The Cape” is full of dark, genuinely creepy character detail, and thus would make for an ideal fantasy/horror/sci-fi blockbuster adaptation in the wake of The Black Phone’s success. The only issue would be hiding the source story’s big twist from viewers, which might be trickier since “The Cape” already spawned a successful comic adaptation.

My Father’s Mask

Why Only Finney And The Grabber Hear The Black Phone Ring

A trippy, nightmarish surreal horror, Hill’s coming-of-age oddity “My Father’s Mask” would make for a compelling movie. However, its slight story of a boy wondering what his parents are hiding from him may not be able to sustain a feature-length runtime. The A24 horror movie Men garnered critical acclaim with a similarly symbolism-heavy, plot-light story of a troubled protagonist switching seamlessly between creepy, hallucinatory magic realism and a more grounded, normal reality. However, that effort also frustrated mainstream audiences and underperformed at the box office as a result. Since Hill’s debut collection contains more accessible stories like “The Cape” and “Best New Horror,” bringing "My Father’s Mask” to life as a movie could be a mistake.

The creepy story has something to say about the main character's journey from childhood into adolescence and the accompanying loss of innocence, but it is difficult to decipher and intuitionally left ambiguous in a way that works best when contained in a short story. After The Black Phone proved an unlikely hit with both critics and audiences, "My Father’s Mask” would be one of the riskiest Hill adaptations for directors hoping to cash in on the author’s appeal.

More: Every Scott Derrickson Horror Movie Ranked Worst To Best (Including Black Phone)