Mr. Harrigan’s Phone has allured audiences since it was released earlier this month on Netflix. The film is based on Stephen King‘s eponymous novella, taken from his collection If It Bleeds. The film stars Jaeden Martell, Joe Tippett, Donald Sutherland and Kirby Howell-Baptiste.
The film tells the story of Craig, a young boy who becomes friends with the peculiar Mr. Harrigan. After Mr. Harrigan dies, Craig continues to make contact with his older friend via phone calls. Craig then receives strange text messages from Mr. Harrigan’s phone from beyond the grave.
Stephen King has now revealed his own interpretations of the text messages that Craig receives. He took to Twitter to write: “Messages from Mr. Harrigan’s haunted phone… and remember, this is just my interpretation; I was never 100% sure.”
According to King: “CCCx” means “Love from Mr. Harrigan”, “CCC aa” means “It hurts, it hurts (as in Aahhh!)”, while “CCC sT” means “Craig, stop”, the latter of which King notes that “almost everyone agrees” on, as does he.
Mr. Harrigan’s Phone has become a hit on Netflix, especially considering its relatively small budget. During the first five days of its release, the film was watched for over 35,420,000 hours. It is predicted that the film will continue to pull in good numbers for the rest of the month, especially seeing as it is Halloween (and therefore ‘spooky’) season.
The collection that the film is taken from, If It Bleeds, has had four of its stories taken by several different parties, including Netflix, which will eventually stream three of them. The story ‘Rat’ has been taken on by Ben Stiller, who will produce, direct and star in its adaptation. Darren Aronofsky, meanwhile, has been attached to ‘The Life of Chuck’, although he is only said to be producing its adaptation.