Osgood Perkins is staying in horror for his next film. The Longlegs director is moving on from serial killers to tackle an evil toy in The Monkey, a supernatural horror based on a Stephen King short story.
In The Monkey teaser, Theo James stars as Hal and Bill, twin brothers who witness a series of horrific deaths after discovering their father’s old toy monkey in the attic. The brothers separate after discarding the monkey in an attempt to move on with their lives. When the gruesome deaths suddenly restart again, the brotherly duo reunite and set out to eradicate the monkey once and for all.
Besides James, The Monkey’s ensemble includes Tatiana Maslany, Elijah Wood, Colin O’Brien, Rohan Campbell, and Sarah Levy. Christian Convery will play the younger versions of Hal and Bill.
Perkins writes and directs The Monkey, based on King’s 1980 short story of the same name. James Wan, the legendary horror mastermind behind Saw and The Conjuring, produces The Monkey alongside Michael Clear, Dave Caplan, Brian Kavanaugh-Jones, and Chris Ferguson.
Perkins and Neon are riding high off the success of Longlegs, a serial killer thriller starring Nicolas Cage and Maika Monroe. Released in July, Longlegs shattered box office expectations with an opening weekend haul of $22.4 million domestically. Longlegs became Neon’s highest-grossing film to date with $108 million worldwide on a budget of less than $10 million.
While Longlegs and The Monkey are both horror films, that’s where the comparisons end. According to Perkins, The Monkey is more like Misery, Creepshow, Gremlins, and American Werewolf than Longlegs.
“To me, if you’re gonna make a movie about a toy monkey, you can be serious about it,” Perkins told Bloody Disgusting’s Boo Crew Podcast. “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.”
The Monkey opens in theaters on February 21, 2025.
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