The Blackcoat’s Daughter (a.k.a. February), I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House, and Gretel & Hansel director Osgood Perkins has been working with Nicolas Cage on a new horror project called Longlegs, and now he has just set up the horror project he’ll be moving on to when Longlegs is all wrapped up: an adaptation of the Stephen King short story The Monkey! Theo James of The White Lotus has already signed on to star in the film, which is being produced by genre regular James Wan.
Perkins will be directing The Monkey from his own screenplay. The film will tell the following story: 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 and Michael Clear are producing The Monkey for Atomic Monster, while Jason Cloth and Dave Caplan produce for C2 Motion Picture Group. Executive producers include Brian Kavanaugh-Jones and Fred Berger of Automatik, Peter Luo and Nancy Xu of Stars Collective, John Friedberg of Black Bear International, and Chris Ferguson. Atomic Monster and Stars Collective developed the project, and C2 Motion Picture Group is providing the financing. Black Bear International will be presenting the project to potential distributors at the Cannes Film Festival.
Wan provided the following statement: “Stephen King is the godfather of the horror genre. He had a huge influence on me as a child and throughout my career and it’s always been a dream to help bring one of his stories to life. The Monkey is a personal favorite, with its simple, iconic, and incredibly marketable conceit. And I can’t imagine anyone better than a visionary and lifelong genre fan like Osgood to bring this to life.“
Cloth and Caplan had this to say: “We couldn’t be more excited to partner with Osgood, James, Brian and our friends at Black Bear International to present Stephen King’s The Monkey. It perfectly checks the box of what is working in the marketplace right now and will be a hot property. We can’t wait for audiences to see Theo James in this role – he is really going to knock it out the park with an amazing performance.“
In addition to directing the films mentioned at the top of this article, Perkins directed an episode of the recent revival of The Twilight Zone. He has also worked on the screenplays for the thriller Removal, the crime thriller Cold Comes the Night, and the horror film The Girl in the Photographs.
I’m always interested in Stephen King adaptations and this one has an interesting team behind it, so The Monkey definitely has my attention.
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