Stephen King’s ‘80s horror story, The Monkey, is heading to the large display screen with a launch date of February 21, 2025.
Neon introduced the date with an eerie poster for the film on X/Twitter at the moment, promising to ship the newest adaptation of King’s work early subsequent yr. The image doesn’t reveal a lot about the way it will deliver the quick story to moviegoers, however it does set the tone with a creepy have a look at its titular, cymbal-clapping monkey toy.
Aside from King, it is bought some massive names behind it as properly. James Wan, the horror veteran behind Saw, The Conjuring, Insidious, and blockbusters like Aquaman and Furious 7, is producing, whereas Longlegs filmmaker Osgood Perkins is directing.
Stephen King, James Wan, and Osgood Perkins.
THE MONKEY.
February 21, 2025 pic.twitter.com/NQvqPq57P5— NEON (@neonrated) June 21, 2024
Perkins opened up about The Monkey throughout a latest interview with Bloody Disgusting. He explains that, whereas Longlegs is poised to terrorize audiences when it releases subsequent month, his King adaptation guarantees one thing completely different.
“It’s gonna really feel extra like Misery or Creepshow or Gremlins or American Werewolf,” Perkins mentioned. “It couldn’t be LESS like Longlegs. To me, should you’re gonna make a film a couple of toy monkey, you might be severe about it. But a lot of King is humorous and nostalgic feeling. So we tried to make a film that felt just a little bit extra like one thing from the late ’80s – ’90s. It’s sorta like, if Robert Zemeckis had identical to a LITTLE little bit of acid and made a Stephen King image a couple of monkey toy.”
The Monkey is centered on two twin brothers named Hal and Bill after they discover an outdated monkey toy that has been hidden in an attic. When deaths start to crop up round them, they work collectively to detroy the toy for good. Its forged consists of names like Theo James (The Divergent Series, The Gentlemen), Elijah Wood (The Lord of the Rings, Yellowjackets), Tatiana Maslany (She-Hulk: Attorney at Law, Orphan Black), Rohan Campbell (Halloween Ends, The Hardy Boys), and Sarah Levy (Schitt’s Creek, SurrealEstate).
“For me, ideally it’s the film that children and their dad and mom wanna go see collectively,” Perkins provides. “People blow up, folks explode; it’s very excessive however it’s very humorous. It’s very father-son redemption, it’s very touching, it’s very nostalgic, it’s very Stephen King.”
The Monkey premieres early subsequent yr. For a greater have a look at Perkins’ work, you possibly can learn our Longlegs overview. We gave the Nicolas Cage and Maika Monroe-led movie a 7/10, saying, “Osgood Perkins places a Satanic spin on The Silence of the Lambs in Longlegs, an unnerving, stylishly crafted serial-killer thriller with a weird supernatural twist.”
Michael Cripe is a contract contributor with IGN. He began writing within the business in 2017 and is finest identified for his work at retailers reminiscent of The Pitch, The Escapist, OnlySP, and Gameranx.
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