No shortage exists for upcoming adaptations of Stephen King’s work. There’s HBO’s Welcome To Derry series that will include Bill Skarsgård as Pennywise, and Glen Powell is preparing for a remake of The Running Man. Also, a Salem’s Lot remake will stream on Max at some point.
Then there’s The Monkey, which shall be a feature-length movie (contrasted with the 2023 short from director Spencer Sherry) that adapts King’s 1980 story that he later tweaked for the Skeleton Crew collection. If you are enjoying the evil doll films these days like M3GAN and her diabolical predecessors, then The Monkey should feel like the granddaddy of those stories. What can we expect from this long-overdue onscreen slice of horror?
Plot
Essentially, this film will revolve around a cymbal-clanging, diabolical toy monkey that refuses to be thrown into the trash. You know how that goes whenever James Wan is producing a doll-based movie, right? NEON has also released a lone image of this horrible artifact lurking in the darkness:
Stephen King, James Wan, and Osgood Perkins.
THE MONKEY.
February 21, 2025 pic.twitter.com/NQvqPq57P5— NEON (@neonrated) June 21, 2024
As noted above, this project also hails from director Osgood Perkins, who will soon head into theaters with another seat-handle gripping project, Longlegs, his Nic Cage serial killer movie. While promoting that project, Perkins recently dropped a few hints on The Monkey to Bloody Disgusting’s Boo Crew podcast. Those details include what type of Stephen King vibe to expect: “It’s gonna feel more like Misery or Creepshow.”
Will this be a serious-toned film or a bit more like dark comedy? Perkins had that answer, too, along with advice on ideal viewing companions:
“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 – ’90s … For me, ideally it’s the movie that kids and their parents wanna go see together. People blow up, people explode; it’s very extreme but it’s very funny. It’s very father-son redemption, it’s very touching, it’s very nostalgic, it’s very Stephen King.”
There you have it. If your parents are cool and into horror, then perhaps you can watch with them, if everyone is of age. Big promises there, but this movie hails from Black Bear and is produced by Michael Clear, James Wan, and Jason Cloth, and here’s the movie’s synopsis:
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.
Cast
Theo James will be on hand to lend his handsome-leading-man-who-might-harbor-a-dark-side talents. The film co-stars Tatiana Maslany, Christian Convery, Elijah Wood, Sarah Levy, Rohan Campbell, and Colin O’Brien.
Release Date
Finally, an anticipated Stephen King project has a concrete release date: February 21, 2025.
Trailer
It’s only a matter of time before we see a trailer or teaser clip, but if you are jonesing for some King-fueled horror that you might have missed, here’s the trailer for the underrated In The Tall Grass, now streaming on Netflix: