Longlegs director Osgood Perkins is tackling Stephen King adaptation The Monkey next. Here’s the first full trailer:
By any yardstick, Longlegs has proved to be one of this year’s most pleasant surprises in cinemas, with Osgood Perkins’ gloomy psychological thriller impressing audiences and overperforming at the box office. Perkins is following up his success in 2024 with an early 2025 release: The Monkey, his spin on one of Stephen King’s classic short stories.
We got a teaser back in August which showcased little in the way of footage, instead focusing on highlighting the quality of personnel involved in the production. There’s the aforementioned Oz Perkins, once again working with Neon, King, an author who needs no introduction and James Wan, the horror impresario who has produced the project.
In front of the camera, there’s a double dose of Theo James, the recent lead of Netflix’s The Gentlemen series. He’s playing dual roles and will be supported by Tatiana Maslany, Elijah Wood, Christian Convery, Colin O’Brien, Rohan Campbell and Sarah Levy.
Read more: Longlegs review | Brace yourself for an outlandish, atmospheric serial killer horror
The Monkey has a synopsis, which goes like this:
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.
If you’re expecting the same relentless grim tone that we saw in Longlegs though, you’ll be in for a surprise. “It’s feeling more like an old John Landis movie or a Joe Dante movie or a Robert Zemeckis movie,” the filmmaker said a while ago to The Hollywood Reporter. “I saw an opportunity to make a wry, absurdist comedy about death …. At the end of the day, if you want to reduce it, it’s the haunted toy or evil toy subgenre, and I couldn’t imagine doing a serious one of those. To me, it rang utterly false to approach it that way, so I just went in the other direction.”
The film releases in February 2025. Here’s the new trailer below.
