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The Monkey
Fresh off starring in Season 2 of HBO’s The White Lotus, Theo James has been set to lead horror movie The Monkey, based on the short story by Stephen King.
The team behind the buzzy project includes genre supremo James Wan, creator of the The Conjuring Universe and co-creator of the Saw and Insidious franchises.
Wan is producing with Atomic Monster partner Michael Clear (M3GAN), and C2 Motion Picture Group’s Jason Cloth (Joker) and Dave Caplan (Babylon). The supernatural story has been adapted for the screen by genre specialist Osgood Perkins (Longlegs), who also will direct.
Black Bear International is launching the project ahead of the Cannes market, where it will be among hot titles.
In The Monkey, 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. Additional casting is underway.
Automatik’s Brian Kavanaugh-Jones (Insidious) and Fred Berger (La La Land), Chris Ferguson (Child’s Play) and Stars Collective’s Peter Luo and Nancy Xu will executive produce alongside John Friedberg (Greenland) for Black Bear International.
The project was developed with Atomic Monster and Stars Collective, with C2 Motion Picture Group coming on board to fully finance.
Talking about the film, Wan said: “Stephen King is the godfather of the horror genre. 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.”
Added Cloth and Caplan: “We couldn’t be more excited to partner with Osgood, James, Brian 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. We can’t wait for audiences to see Theo James in this role – he is really going to knock it out the park with an amazing performance.”
Wan, whose Conjuring Universe is the highest-grossing horror franchise in history, recently produced M3GAN and is also known for directing tentpoles including Furious 7 ($1.5B) and Aquaman ($1.15 
.
Underworld and Divergent star James next will be seen as the lead in Guy Ritchie’s The Gentlemen TV series for Netflix.
Black Bear International’s stacked Cannes slate includes Ritchie’s upcoming untitled action movie, starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Henry Cavill and Eiza González; Matthew McConaughey crime thriller The Rivals of Amziah King from Black Bear Pictures and Heyday; the romantic drama On Swift Horses, starring Daisy Edgar Jones, Jacob Elordi and Will Poulter; Max Minghella’s thriller Shell, starring Elisabeth Moss, Kate Hudson and Kaia Gerber; and Timur Bekmambetov’s Motor City starring Alan Ritchson.
This is the second King project we’ve revealed for the Cannes market in consecutive days with buyers also getting a bite at Tom Hiddleston-Mark Hamill starrer The Life of Chuck. It’s rare for a market to have one Stephen King project, so two is a treat given the King of Horror’s track record and the horror genre’s general box office boon.
James is represented by UTA, Markham, Froggatt and Irwin, and Sloane, Offer, Weber & Dern. Perkins is repped by CAA, Grandview, and Lichter, Grossman, Nichols. The deal was negotiated on behalf of Black Bear International by Jill Silfen.
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Horror movie The Monkey, the adaptation of the Stephen King short story, wrapped shoot a week ago and we can reveal that lead cast joining Theo James (The White Lotus) includes Tatiana Maslany (She–Hulk: Attorney at Law), Elijah Wood (The Lord Of The Rings), Christian Convery (Sweet Tooth), Colin O’Brien (Wonka), Rohan Campbell (The Hardy Boys) and Sarah Levy (Schitt’s Creek).
As we previously reported, the team behind the movie includes genre supremo James Wan, creator of the The Conjuring Universe and co-creator of the Saw and Insidious franchises.
In The Monkey, 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.
Theo James plays the twins in later years. Convery plays the younger twins.
Wan is producing with Atomic Monster partner Michael Clear (M3GAN), and C2 Motion Picture Group’s Jason Cloth (Joker) and Dave Caplan (Babylon). C2 financed the supernatural story which has been adapted for the screen by genre specialist Osgood Perkins (Longlegs) who is also directing.
Brian Kavanaugh-Jones (Insidious) produces for Range and Chris Ferguson (Child’s Play) is producing for Odd Fellows. Exec producers are Range’s Fred Berger (La La Land), Stars Collective’s Peter Luo and Nancy Xu, and John Friedberg (Greenland) for Black Bear International.
Black Bear launched sales on the movie last Cannes where we hear it sold well.
>>> Deadline
Multiple U.S. distributors came in hot for the project after its newest promo on the Croisette and we hear a deal settled in the high seven figures.
Three horror powerhouses are coming together for The Monkey, an adaptation of the Stephen King story produced by James Wan and directed by Osgood Perkins (Longlegs).
NEON will likely release The Monkey sometime in 2025, but what can you expect from Osgood Perkins’ take on the classic King story? For starters, it’s NOTHING like Longlegs.
Perkins tells Bloody Disgusting’s Boo Crew Podcast this week, “It’s gonna feel more like Misery or Creepshow or Gremlins or American Werewolf. 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.”
“For me, ideally it’s the movie that kids and their parents wanna go see together,” Perkins continues. “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,” Perkins adds. “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.”
The Monkey is a short horror story that appeared in Skeleton Crew, a 1985 collection that also featured The Mist, The Jaunt, The Raft, Survivor Type, The Reach, and more.
Theo James (The White Lotus) stars alongside Tatiana Maslany (She–Hulk: Attorney at Law), Elijah Wood (Maniac), Christian Convery (Sweet Tooth), Colin O’Brien (Wonka), Rohan Campbell (Halloween Ends) and Sarah Levy (Schitt’s Creek).
Osgood Perkins (The Blackcoat’s Daughter, Gretel & Hansel, the upcoming Longlegs) wrote the screenplay for the feature film adaptation and he also directed the upcoming movie.
“In The Monkey, 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.”
>>> Source
PS: He saw HERETIC that night.