Stephen King’s The Monkey Being Adapted by James Wan With White Lotus Star

Two horror icons are set to collide for a new project, as Insidious and The Conjuring creator James Wan is helping bring a Stephen King story to life, with Deadline reporting that the short story “The Monkey” from the collection Skeleton Crew is getting adapted. Wan is set to produce while The Blackcoat’s Daughter and Gretel & Hansel director Osgood Perkins is set to helm the project, which will star The White Lotus actor Theo James. It’s currently unknown if the project will be developed with a big-screen or streaming release in mind, as the project is in such early stages.

The outlet describes the story, “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.”

“Stephen King is the godfather of the horror genre,” Wan shared of the project. “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.”

“We couldn’t be more excited to partner with Osgood, James, Brian [Kavanaugh-Jones], and our friends at Black Bear International to present Stephen King’s ‘The Monkey.’ It perfectly checks the box of what is working in the marketplace right now and will be a hot property,” producers Jason Cloth and Dave Caplan added. “We can’t wait for audiences to see Theo James in this role — he is really going to knock it out of the park with an amazing performance.”

Back in 2018, reports emerged that Wan was developing a new take on Stephen King’s The Tommyknockers, though few updates about that project have been revealed in the years since.

Stay tuned for details on The Monkey.

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