‘The Monkey’ By Osgood Perkins.
The supernatural horror hit ‘LongLegs’ director Osgood Perkins had already shot a new film while promoting ‘Longlegs’, reuniting with Neon. titled “The Monkey”, another supernatural horror film based on the 1980 short story by Stephen King. It stars Theo James and Tatiana Maslany in the leads. It is written and directed by Oz Perkins. Black bear Pictures is the financier and it was produced by ‘The Conjuring’ franchise creator James Wan under his Atomic Monster banner. Neon will distribute the pic. The budget is said to be around $10-11 million.
Theo James (The Gentlemen) will star in dual roles, he plays the twins as adults, with Christian Convery (Sweet Tooth) playing younger versions. In March 2024, Tatiana Maslany (She Hulk), Elijah Wood (The Lord of the Rings), Colin O’Brian (Wonka), Rohan Campbell (The Hardy Boys) and Sarah Levy (Schitt’s Creek) were added to the cast.
Synopsis: Starring Theo James in dual roles, ‘The Monkey’ centers on twin brothers Hal and Bill, who after discovering their father’s old monkey toy in the attic, begin to see a series of gruesome deaths 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.
Black Bear initially announced a film adaptation of Stephen Kings short story was in development and launched sales to distributors on the movie in last year’s Cannes market, where it sold well internationally. Osgood Perkins was hired to write and direct. The project was previously in development in 2022 at Searchlight Pictures.
Following a multi-buyer tug of war, “The Monkey” was sold to Neon for high seven figures for domestic rights in the U.S. Multiple American distributors came in hot for the project after it’s newest promo on the Croisette.
In June, while speaking about the film with Entertainment Weekly, Perkins described it as “a kids movie that’s rated R”. he also added; “The Monkey is like Robert Zemeckis on ecstasy or something. It’s a very playful comedy with a lot of really excessive gore, language”. Perkins also teased that it was “very extreme, but very funny” that involves exploding people.
In August, Neon released a teaser for “The Monkey’ which featured creepy carnival music and a toy monkey, covered in shadow, menacingly taps on a drum. It also features a shot of a bloody James.
The horror teaser drop comes following the record-breaking release of the Maika Monroe-Nicolas Cage supernatural horror pic ‘Longlegs’, which is the highest-grossing in Neon’s history at $104 million with a budget of under $10 million.
Perkins shot this one very quickly. Principal photography began in Vancouver on February 5, 2024 and wrapped on March 22, 2024. He completed the edit and a director’s cut at the end of May.
In August, “The Monkey” was test screened, and the reactions were that it was tonally completely different than ‘Longlegs’. “It’s a dark horror comedy” in the same vein as “Fright Night” and “American Werewolf in London”. However, Perkins is said to still maintain the sense of dread from his more serious films, enough so to make a toy monkey seem deeply unnerving and evil.
Following the success of ‘Longlegs’, Neon recently boarded their third consecutive Perkins film, buying the rights for the already-shot “Keeper” out of Cannes this year. Neon has notably acquired the last five Palme d’Or winners, including Sean Baker’s “Anora” which made it five in a row at this years festival. and they have put a lot of confidence in Perkins to replicate the success of ‘Longlegs’ with his next two films.
Oz Perkins, the eldest son of ‘Psycho’ himself, Anthony Perkins, is best known for his 2015 indie debut, “The Blackcoat’s Daughter”, and 2020’s “Gretel & Hansel”.
Nico Aguilar is the cinematographer on “The Monkey”.
Neon has set a February 21, 2025 release date.
