Theo James Is Covered in Blood and Seeing Double in Osgood Perkins’ Stephen King Adaptation

Theo James is making his horror debut — and he’s already dripping with blood.

The “White Lotus” and “Time Traveler’s Wife” teams up with his fellow Warner Bros. staple James Wan, who produces Osgood Perkins’ “The Monkey.”

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James plays twins Bill and Hal, who discover their dad’s old monkey toy in the attic. The official logline simply reads: “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 full synopsis is still elusive, but a clip was shared to tease the haunting horror feature.

“The Monkey” is based on Stephen King‘s 1980 short story of the same name. Perkins wrote and directed the adaptation, which also stars Elijah Wood, Tatiana Maslany, Christian Convery, Colin O’Brien, Rohan Campbell, and Sarah Levy.

“The Monkey” is Perkins’ latest Neon film after making history at the company with the highest-grossing film released by the distributor with “Longlegs.” The feature even surpassed Neon’s Best Picture winner “Parasite” at the box office. Perkins already has a third film set at Neon, but details remain under wraps. “Longlegs” was Perkins’ first feature with the distributor.

Perkins told The Hollywood Reporter that “The Monkey” is his most comedic feature yet.

“It’s feeling more like an old John Landis movie or a Joe Dante movie or a Robert Zemeckis movie,” Perkin said. “I saw an opportunity to make a wry, absurdist comedy about death. It’s about the very basic fact that we all die — and how f*cking funny and weird and impossible and surreal is that shit? And to come at it from a tragicomedy kind of voice felt like it fit.”

He added, “At the end of the day, if you want to reduce it, it’s the haunted toy or evil toy subgenre, and I couldn’t imagine doing a serious one of those. To me, it rang utterly false to approach it that way, so I just went in the other direction.”

“The Monkey” is produced by James Wan, Dave Caplan, Michael Clear, Chris Ferguson, and Brian Kavanaugh-Jones. The film is Perkins’ first feature since “Longlegs” became Neon’s highest-grossing movie ever and one of the top-grossing horror movies of 2024.

“The Monkey” premieres February 21 in theaters from Neon.

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