‘The Monkey’ – Osgood Perkins Previews His Fun-for-the-Family Stephen King Movie [Exclusive]

Three horror powerhouses are coming together for The Monkey, an adaptation of the Stephen King story produced by James Wan and directed by Osgood Perkins (Longlegs).

NEON will likely release The Monkey sometime in 2025, but what can you expect from Osgood Perkins’ take on the classic King story? For starters, it’s NOTHING like Longlegs.

Perkins tells Bloody Disgusting’s Boo Crew Podcast this week, “It’s gonna feel more like Misery or Creepshow or Gremlins or American Werewolf. It couldn’t be LESS like Longlegs. To me, if you’re gonna make a movie about a toy monkey, you can be serious about it. But so much of King is funny and nostalgic feeling. So we tried to make a movie that felt a little bit more like something from the late ’80s – ’90s. It’s sorta like, if Robert Zemeckis had just like a LITTLE bit of acid and made a Stephen King picture about a monkey toy.”

“For me, ideally it’s the movie that kids and their parents wanna go see together,” Perkins continues. “People blow up, people explode; it’s very extreme but it’s very funny. It’s very father-son redemption, it’s very touching, it’s very nostalgic, it’s very Stephen King.”

“The fact that I’ve had his seal of approval from the top, given the fact that I’ve really invented a new thing, is exciting,” Perkins adds. “The success we’ve had with Longlegs has been astonishing and The Monkey being a COMPLETELY different movie, a COMPLETELY different movie in every possible way, is really exciting to me to see what’s gonna happen.”

The Monkey is a short horror story that appeared in Skeleton Crew, a 1985 collection that also featured The Mist, The Jaunt, The Raft, Survivor Type, The Reach, and more.

Theo James (The White Lotus) stars alongside Tatiana Maslany (She–Hulk: Attorney at Law), Elijah Wood (Maniac), Christian Convery (Sweet Tooth), Colin O’Brien (Wonka), Rohan Campbell (Halloween Ends) and Sarah Levy (Schitt’s Creek).

Osgood Perkins (The Blackcoat’s Daughter, Gretel & Hansel, the upcoming Longlegs) wrote the screenplay for the feature film adaptation and he also directed the upcoming movie.

“In The Monkey, when twin brothers Hal and Bill discover their father’s old monkey toy in the attic, a series of gruesome deaths starts occurring all around them. The brothers decide to throw the monkey away and move on with their lives, growing apart over the years.

“But when the mysterious deaths begin again, the brothers must reunite to find a way to destroy the monkey for good before it takes the lives of everyone close to them.”

James Wan is producing with Atomic Monster partner Michael Clear (M3GAN), and C2 Motion Picture Group’s Jason Cloth (Joker) and Dave Caplan (Babylon).