Some very exciting news just landed over at Deadline, folks: Stephen King’s classic short story “The Monkey” is being adapted for the big screen by Osgood Perkins (The Blackcoat’s Daughter, the upcoming Longlegs), who’ll write and direct the project for James Wan’s Atomic Monster. Theo James, most recently seen on HBO’s The White Lotus, will star.
There’s so much to be hyped about here. Over the last decade or so, Perkins has established himself as one of the most interesting voices in the horror genre, delivering slow-burn scares with just a smidge of nightmarish surrealism. Any new Perkins film is one worth getting excited for, but Perkins tackling King? Hoo, buddy, that’s gonna be good.
And what a King story it is! Written in 1980 and included in King’s Skeleton Crew collection, “The Monkey” begins with two young boys and their dad cleaning out an attic. Soon enough, one of the boys stumbles upon an old, wind-up monkey toy (y’know, the kind that smashes two little cymbals together while nodding maniacally? There’s one at the top of this page, from the Monkey Shines poster), and … well, let’s just say this monkey’s been around for a while, that it has a very bad attitude, and that things are going to get worse for this family before they get better.
James Wan says:
“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.”
For those keeping score at home, this is the second King adaptation we’ve learned about in the past 24 hours (if you missed it, Mike Flanagan is adapting King’s “The Life of Chuck” for the big screen, which you can read more about here). These projects join HBO’s currently-filming IT prequel, Welcome to Derry, the soon-to-be-released The Boogeyman, and the still-undated ‘Salem’s Lot remake in the King-to-screen pipeline, and will surely be joined by more in the months ahead.
Nothing else to report on The Monkey at this time, but we’re eagerly anticipating further updates on this one, and we’ll have those updates in front of you just as soon as they roll in. Stay tuned, my fellow King nerds!
