Stephen King and Oz Perkins fans, pay attention. NEON has set a release date for The Monkey, which Perkins directed based on King’s classic short story of the same name. The adaptation will now arrive in theaters on February 21, 2025. Mark your calendars and plan your post-Valentine’s Day weekend accordingly. The studio has also released the first artwork for the film, which you can check out below.
Stephen King, James Wan, and Osgood Perkins.
THE MONKEY.
February 21, 2025 pic.twitter.com/NQvqPq57P5— NEON (@neonrated) June 21, 2024
On that date, the film will have very little by way of direct competition. As it stands, the only other movie set to release against it is Lionsgate’s drama The Unbreakable Boy. It seems fair to say that The Monkey is going for a different audience, even if Perkins did recently describe it as a family movie of sorts. As for what the film in question is about? The synopsis reads as follows:
“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.”
The story was included in King’s short story collection Skeleton Crew, which was published in 1985. Filming on the adaptation wrapped in March. It boasts a truly stacked cast that includes the likes of Theo James (The White Lotus), Tatiana Maslany (Orphan Black), Elijah Wood (The Lord Of The Rings), Christian Convery (Sweet Tooth), Colin O’Brien (Wonka), Rohan Campbell (Halloween Ends) and Sarah Levy (Schitt’s Creek).
Adding more intrigue to the project is the fact that horror master James Wan, of Saw and The Conjuring fame, is also a producer on the movie alongside Michael Clear, Jason Cloth, Dave Caplan, Brian Kavanaugh-Jones and Chris Ferguson. Fred Berger, Peter Luo, Nancy Xu and John Friedberg serve as executive producers. Perkins, meanwhile, is coming off of this year’s much-anticipated Longlegs, which recently landed on the cover of FANGORIA #24. Some of the filmmaker’s other credits include The Blackcoat’s Daughter and Gretel & Hansel.
It remains a very good time to be a Stephen King fan. Aside from this movie, a host of other adaptations of his work are in various stages of development. This year will finally see the release of the long-awaited Salem’s Lot movie on Max. Mike Flanagan’s The Life of Chuck is also in the can. We’ve also got Edgar Wright’s The Running Man, Francis Lawrence’s The Long Walk and the TV series Welcome to Derry, which takes place in the same universe as the It movies. So yeah, there is plenty of King goodness on the way.
Look for The Monkey in theaters on February 21, 2025.
