Why The Monkey Had to Change Stephen King’s Story (It’s Because of Pixar)

Among the horrific yarns chronicled in Stephen King‘s 1980 short story collection Skeleton Crew is The Monkey. A take on the classic horror staple of toys going very wrong, this tale’s proven to be a cult favorite among many King fans. This Friday will see the premiere of the feature film version of the story, directed by Longlegs filmmaker Osgood Perkins, and fittingly titled, what else, The Monkey. This particular production follows a bevy of other modern King movie adaptations made in the wake of It’s box office success, but unlike many of the other recent King works, The Monkey had to make a big change.

King books have inspired such a committed fanbase that newer adaptations of his work are very careful to maintain all the qualities of these texts people loved in the first place. However, when it came to adapting The Monkey, one critical element of the titular simian had to be changed for the big screen. Believe it or not, that change came about because of a family-friendly Pixar movie.

Which Pixar Movie Inspired The Monkey’s Source Material Deviation?

In Stephen King’s original The Monkey short story, the monkey toy that causes so much gnarly chaos is a classic staple of any vintage toy shelf. Specifically, a cymbal-playing monkey, a critter that even made it onto the cover of various versions of the Skeleton Crew book. This toy was clearly viewed as creepy by more than just King and Perkins. In 2010, the Lee Unkrich-directed Pixar Animation Studios feature Toy Story 3 featured an adversary in the form of a cymbal-playing money that surveyed every inch of Sunnyside Day Care for the villainous Lotso.

Named The Monkey, this critter traumatized an entire generation of young moviegoers. Even showing The Monkey wearing some cool shades and dancing along to the beat of Randy Newman’s “We Belong Together” in the end credits wasn’t enough to dilute how terrifying this omniscient object was, especially when he screamed to terrify Woody. It turns out, though, that The Monkey’s influence reached far beyond just how he impacted Andy’s toys in 2010.

When he first started working on The Monkey, Perkins (who was already familiar with the short story) was told by one of the producers that Disney had a trademark on cinematic depictions of toy monkeys playing cymbals thanks to Toy Story 3. Thus, a key element of the source material had to be deleted from the start. The titular evil entity of The Monkey would need a new instrument to play and one that would feel right for a mid-20th century toy. Luckily, Perkins had some schemes in mind to make things just right.

Perkins Ended Up Preferring The New Version of The Monkey

[RELATED: The Monkey Director Once Played a Horror Movie Legend]

In the end, Perkins leaned into the challenges presented by this trademark quarrel. “It’s one of those things where a limitation becomes an opportunity,” Perkins explained to SFX Magazine (via GamesRadar). “If you’re making movies and you’re not up for that adage then you’re in real trouble! ‘I was like, ‘Hey, that’s awesome. The drum is better.’ The drum is like a marching drum. It’s like, ‘Drum roll, please!’ before something happens. That’s better than cymbals. So thanks, Disney. I prefer it!” A crisis was averted and now The Monkey could go on with its grisly carnage.

Another advantage to this change was that The Monkey could now make its primary foe visually distinctive to viewers unfamiliar with the source material. Toy Story 3 is just one of many pop culture properties that have wrung frights out of toy monkeys playing cymbals. If the feature film adaptation of The Monkey had gone down this route too, the entire project could’ve just faded into the background for people right away. With a drum to play, this mechanical critter was suddenly a lot more distinctive.

The Monkey hasn’t shied away from showing off its fresh new take on its source material, as seen by a teaser trailer that almost exclusively focused on that monkey playing its drums in an increasingly intense (and climatically gory) fashion. Right away, this Osgood Perkins movie was showing die-hard Stephen King fans that this film adaptation wasn’t afraid to take liberties with the original Monkey short story, Surely, though, if King devotees survived an It film adaptation without a gigantic cosmic turtle, an instrument change in The Monkey should be perfectly fine.

The Monkey hits theaters on February 21.