The director of Nicolas Cage’s upcoming twisted horror thriller Longlegs, Osgood Perkins, has revealed that his next project is an adaptation of Stephen King’s The Monkey, and he explains that it will be nothing like Longlegs.
In an interview with Bloody Disgusting’s Boo Crew Podcast, the director shared some details on the film saying: “It’s gonna feel more like Misery or Creepshow or Gremlins or American Werewolf. It couldn’t be LESS like Longlegs.”
The Monkey is part of his King’s 1985 short story collection Skeleton Crew and the story follows two young brothers who one day find their missing father’s cymbal-banging monkey toy. It turns out this monkey is cursed and the toy terrorized their father as a child. Every time the monkey bangs its cymbals, someone dies.
The director went on to say: “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 to ’90s.” For me, ideally, it’s the movie that kids and their parents wanna go see together.”
In another interview with EW, Perkins shared: “I wanted to embrace the humor of Stephen King. I wanted to be more on the side of Creepshow and Misery, and I wanted the movie to feel like a Stephen King movie to really honor the guy.
“I mean, he’s the most significant writer…ever? In any genre, prolifically, just in terms of impact. Certainly for the horror genre, whether it be literature or movies, there’s no one who’s contributed more. So it’s time to really honor the dude. I really made a movie that I hoped he would like.”
He added: “The Monkey is like Robert Zemeckis on ecstasy or something.” So that sounds fun!
The movie stars Christian Convery (Sweet Tooth, Cocaine Bear) as Hal and Bill as kids, and Theo James (The Gentlemen, X-Men ’97) will play the twins as adults. The film also stars Tatiana Maslany (She–Hulk: Attorney at Law), Elijah Wood (Yellowjackets), Colin O’Brien (Wonka), Rohan Campbell (The Hardy Boys), and Sarah Levy (Schitt’s Creek).
I loved this story when I first read it and I can’t wait to see how Perkin’s brings it to life for the big screen!