Stephen King's The Monkey Gets First Teaser

The adaptation hits theaters on February 21, 2025.

By Patrick Cavanaugh

The release of last month's Longlegs helped introduce audiences to the works of writer/director Osgood Perkins, and for fans who can't get enough of his frightening filmmaking sensibilities, today brings us our first look at his adaptation of Stephen King's The Monkey. As if bringing together Perkins and King isn't an exciting enough collaboration for horror fans, the movie was produced by James Wan, the mastermind behind such franchises as Saw, The Conjuring, and Insidious. Even though this first teaser doesn't give us much insight into the experience, it'll excite audiences who are ravenous for more experiences from Perkins. You can check out the teaser for The Monkey below before it hits theaters on February 21, 2025.

The short story is found in King's collection Skeleton Crew and is described, "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."

While Longlegs will likely go down as one of the most frightening movies of the years, Perkins previously confirmed that there will be more levity in The Monkey and it won't be quite as dreadful as his most recent movie.

"It's gonna feel more like Misery or Creepshow or Gremlins or American Werewolf," Perkins revealed to The Boo Crew podcast. "It couldn't be less like Longlegs. 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. It's sorta like, if Robert Zemeckis had just like a little bit of acid and made a Stephen King picture about a monkey toy."

He continued, "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. The fact that I've had his seal of approval from the top, given the fact that I've really invented a new thing, is exciting. The success we've had with Longlegs has been astonishing and The Monkey being a completely different movie, a completely different movie in every possible way, is really exciting to me to see what's gonna happen."

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The Monkey hits theaters on February 21, 2025.

Are you looking forward to the movie? Contact Patrick Cavanaugh directly on Twitter or on Instagram to talk all things Star Wars and horror!

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