Summary

Collider’s Perri Nemiroff sits down with Oz Perkins and Theo James for The Monkey.

Perkins takes a unique approach to Stephen King’s The Monkey short story, adding humor and exploring its deeper themes.

In this interview, Perkins and James discuss character development, filming techniques, the decision to go independent, and adapting King’s work with reverence while also making it uniquely their own.

Some of the greatest horror movies have been adaptations of Stephen King’s work. While you’ve likely seen a handful, at least, we’re willing to bet you’ve never seen one quite like Osgood Perkins’ The Monkey. The Longlegs writer-director has teamed with Neon yet again to bring audiences his expression of the King-penned short story without studio interference.
Starring Theo James as twins Hal and Bill, The Monkey is “so much more than just a haunted or freaky toy movie.” While still respecting King’s themes of the “melancholy of living,” Perkins imbues this gory Final Destination-style horror movie with his own humor that positions the film just “left of center,” a spot Perkins’ previous projects like Longlegs and The Blackcoat’s Daughter settled in as well.
In this interview with Collider’s Perri Nemiroff, Perkins and James explain their film’s blend of tones and why it had to go the independent route in order to maintain Perkins’ vision. James also shares his preparation process for getting into the minds of two polar opposite characters, and explains how they pulled that off in a more old-school way. You can watch the full conversation in the video above, or read the transcript below.
‘The Monkey’ Captures Stephen King’s “Melancholy of Living”

“The idea was to try to create something that was fun.”

PERRI NEMIROFF: I love the fact that, with adaptations, there is a wonderful challenge in honoring the source material, but also finding a way to put your own stamp on it. Osgood, what space did you find in that Stephen King short that you thought you could fill in a way that’s unique to you as a filmmaker?
OSGOOD PERKINS: What I wanted to do was I wanted to express what Stephen King means to me, more than holding the book open with one hand and typing with the other and doing some kind of straight adaptation, which I don’t think he expected. He certainly didn’t ask for it. I think he’s a much bigger mind than that. So I think he sort of tacitly welcomed the idea that I would fill this thing out with a personality that was my own, but the intention was always to do it with reverence for him because he’s the greatest. I can’t ignore that. In fact, not only can I not ignore it, but I want to highlight it.
The idea was to try to create something that was fun because I’ve always found Stephen King’s writing to be really humorous, really sort of sly and sophisticated. So I thought it could be so much more than just a haunted or freaky toy movie—that it could actually resonate about families and about parenthood and sort of the melancholy of living, which to me permeates all of Stephen King’s stuff. And so that became the guiding force, and he likes it, so all is well.

Image Via Neon

There’s something that you said in our press notes that I really wanted to follow up on. It was mentioned that the team behind the movie originally wanted to go through a studio for the production, but then the phrasing was, “The suits couldn’t wrap their heads around what [you] were trying to pull off.” It was making me wonder, how might The Monkey be different if you had stayed in the studio system, and do you recall the single note you were given that made you think, “That’s not the right path. We have to go independent for this?”
PERKINS: It was more just that the notes started to come down that a different movie was testing well, and they kind of wanted The Monkey all of a sudden to feel more like that movie. When you get into that sort of mentality of, like, “Well, something’s winning over here, so we should probably just make it like that,” that’s a really scary spot for an artist to be, and I’m an artist, turns out, if you didn’t know. And so I think we would have been neutered in our humor. It’s like, “Pick a lane, Perkins. It has to be one or the other. The audience won’t understand it.” I think the biggest problem with studio mentality is underestimating the audience, and I think what we’ve been able to do with Neon, which has been such a privilege, is that we’ve given the audience the opportunity to love something that’s left of center, and it turns out they do.
Left of center is where I belong, so I really appreciate that.
How Theo James Pulls Off Two Characters in ‘The Monkey’

“If you don’t have the pillars of a great script, it’s very hard.”

Image via NEON 

Theo, you get a unique acting opportunity by playing two roles. What is something about your prep process that stays the same from movie to movie, no matter what it is, but then also, what is something about preparing for The Monkey that called for something different?
THEO JAMES: I’d say I always stay in accent from the beginning of the filming process until the end. I feel like to get an accent right, whatever it is, if it’s American, if it’s South African or whatever, you need to live it because you start understanding it. You start understanding the rhythm of it, and also, accent inflects everything about your character. It’s how you walk, how you talk, if you’re front or back-footed. With this, I love the comedy of it. I wanted to make sure those two characters were comedic but in very different ways. Hal is a kind of repressed everyman, so I wanted his speech to be a little more unsure and would stutter and repeat words. Also, the way he moves, he doesn’t move directionally; he moves as if kind of being pulled along. He’s unsure all the time. Bill is the opposite of that. When he moves, he moves with direction. He speaks clearer. His voice is a little more grounded. But it was a challenge to make them as different as possible, but then they’re identical twins at the same time. Not to blow smoke in your mouth, but it was a great script from the get-go, and as he says, he’s a great writer. I knew that from developing something together years ago that he’s an excellent writer.
OSGOOD: I’m just a great writer.
JAMES: And a great kisser. A great lover.
OSGOOD: I’m a good date.
JAMES: If you’ve got a good script, that gives you the anchors. Sometimes, as an actor, you think you can fix things. In reality, if you don’t have the pillars of a great script, it’s very hard, coupled with you want a confident director who knows with exactitude what kind of tone he wants, and that’s exactly what Oz was with this. There were times with the tone when I was like, “Oh, is that too much, man? I don’t know.” He was like, “Trust me, it’s all good,” and he pulled it off.

Image via Neon

So you found both characters, got the accent, maybe got into their headspace, but then what about when it comes to blocking and also thinking ahead to the VFX necessary to pull all of that together? Is there anything about that part of the process that surprised you or required some adaptation?
JAMES: Well, for a lot of doubling, you use Technocrane. So with the computer, you vaguely plan out a scene—two people here, they move here, they move here. That has to be locked. Then the Technocrane will cover a piece of it, and then the computer locks exactly that movement. The thing we found…
PERKINS: We didn’t have that.
JAMES: Well, remember, we talked about a Technocrane. Then we realized that that would kind of box us into performances. You like being light on your feet, so change things, throw in new lines. And actually, in the end, we kind of did it more classically.
PERKINS: We got a guy who had the same ear as Theo from the back.
JAMES: Yeah. But it does need some planning because you don’t want to lock your performance into one side of it. So, you need to plan as the actor to know. Again, you need to keep it loose because naturalism is what you’re going for, really, with being an actor, I hope, but you want to know how you’re going to perform on both sides even before you’ve done it, because then you don’t lock yourself into rhythms.

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You and Christian just absolutely knocked it out of the park.
JAMES: Yeah, he’s great.
As did you, Oz. An artist!
JAMES: An artiste!
PERKINS: I’m just a great writer and a brilliant artist. I don’t know what else I can say about myself.
JAMES: And Christian is fantastic. He’s such a great actor.
PERKINS: So good.

The Monkey

Release Date

February 19, 2025

Runtime

98 Minutes

Writers

Osgood Perkins

Producers

John Rickard, Natalia Safran, Ali Jazayeri, Chris Ferguson, Fred Berger, Giuliana Bertuzzi, James Wan, Brian Kavanaugh-Jones, John Friedberg, Jason Cloth, David Gendron, Michael Clear, Jesse Savath, Peter Luo, Dave Caplan

The Monkey hits theaters on February 21.
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