The Monkey Director and Star Open Up About Adapting Stephen King

Stephen King is an author renowned for his uncanny ability to consistently craft engaging and terrifying stories, so it’s no surprise his works have influenced Hollywood productions for decades. The latest King adaptation to arrive in theaters is The Monkey, based on the short story of the same name. Directed by Osgood Perkins of Longlegs fame, The Monkey follows twin brothers Hal and Bill (both played by Theo James), who discover a mysterious wind-up monkey toy that belonged to their father. While writing the screenplay, Perkins was able to tap into his own childhood to emotionally connect to Hal and Bill’s story.

“It’s all about me in the end. Both twins are representations of myself,” Perkins said in an interview with ComicBook. “The narrative is basically a sketch of my personal experience with insane death and loss and how my brother and I coped and reconciled. The archetypal moment of a boy looking for his father in his father’s stuff is absolutely me growing up with my dad, who was hard to know, and wasn’t the most reflective surface of all surfaces.”

He continued, “And so I had to do a fair amount of snooping and investigating in the closets, in the offices, in the boxes, in the drawers. Found a lot of wacky stuff, I’ll tell you that for sure. And I think that it’s this iconic moment of the yearning to understand the father who’s absent.”

The Monkey is described, “Based on the Stephen King short story, and produced by James Wan (The Conjuring, Saw), The Monkey is a new trip from Longlegs writer/director, Osgood Perkins. When twin brothers find a mysterious wind-up monkey, a series of outrageous deaths tear their family apart. Twenty-five years later, the monkey begins a new killing spree forcing the estranged brothers to confront the cursed toy.”

The film blends comedy and horror, featuring over-the-top death scenes that are meant to entertain more than frighten. The heightened nature of these sequences meant Perkins did not have to trim any of the violence in order to secure a preferred rating.

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“I was never told to cut for violence or gruesomeness,” he said. “It’s because it had the Looney Tunes or Itchy and Scratchy philosophy of none of this is possible. None. No one dies in this way. No one can ever point to one of these deaths and say, ‘But my Uncle John exploded in a swimming pool.’ No, he didn’t, because that’s not physically possible.”

King isn’t the only famous creative who inspired Perkins while working on The Monkey. He was able to channel his love for the Coen brothers with his decision to include voice-over narration in the first half of the movie.

“I love narration. I think it’s such a great way to do so much in a movie, especially [since] you’re able to match it with image,” Perkins said. “It’s just such a rich way to dive deep. And I think one of my favorite written narrations is Raising Arizona … such a wonderful, playful, poetic, linguistic look at this crude guy and in a very poetic way.”

James also touched on the stylistic choice to give the character of Bill a mullet. Not only was it a way to help audiences identify which twin was which, it also allowed the filmmakers to depict Bill’s fractured psyche.

“We wanted to separate them a little, but we didn’t want to do it too much. So we had some time and budget restrictions, but we saw the mullet is an emblem of his sleaze,” James aid. “You know, there used to be a kind of odyssey which didn’t make it into the movie of Bill, and he’s kind of rejected from the Army. And then he goes on this kind of Taxi Driver odyssey into the descent of darkness. And in a way, the mullet sums that up. He’s kind of hungry and slimy.”

The Monkey opens in theaters on February 21st.

Are you excited about the film? Which Stephen King story should Perkins adapt next? Let us know in the comments!