The real-life tragedies that changed Stephen King’s movie The Monkey

Stephen King’s delightful, heartwarming stories have just gotten the big screen treatment Since 1976but no adaptation over the past 49 years is quite like “Ape.” That’s likely because none of those other films had Oz Perkins, the creative horror mastermind behind films like The movie “Longlegs” starring Nicolas Cage. And the slow-burning horror “The Blackcoat’s Daughter” behind the camera. Perkins clearly suited the absurdity of King’s short story, which appeared in his 1985 book “Skeleton Crew.” in Latest issue of Empire magazinethe director draws direct parallels between the cursed story game and his strange and tragic family life.

Perkins tells the outlet that “The Monkey” actually had a “very serious script.” When he joined the projectone presented by James Wan’s Atomic Monster production company. “I felt like it was too dangerous, so I told them, ‘This isn’t for me,’” Perkins recalls. He decided to craft his own version of the story, highlighting the inherent comedy of a cymbal-banging ape visiting “Final Destination” in a manner that kills everyone it meets. “The thing about this monkey game is that the people around it are all dying in crazy ways,” Perkins says. “So, I thought: ‘Okay, I’m an expert on this. My parents died in a crazy way that made headlines.’

The director says he “spent a lot of his life recovering from tragedy, and he felt very bad,” and questions why his parents died in ways that seemed “inherently unjust.” Perkins is, after all, the son of famed “Psycho” actor Anthony Perkins and actress and photographer Perry Berenson. The elder Perkins died in 1992, having kept his HIV/AIDS diagnosis secret until his death, according to Obituary in Los Angeles Times. In the same memorial piece, Anthony Perkins was quoted as saying he feared he would kill his father after wishing him dead before suffering a fatal heart attack. The actor known as Norman Bates was only 5 years old at the time.

Osgood Perkins’ mother also met a shocking fate: She was a passenger on the first plane to hit the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. In her obituary The GuardianBerenson’s own work — photo work for Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar, as well as roles in films including “Cat People” and “Remember My Name” — has been overshadowed by lengthy explanations of Perkins’ death. The column also references her grandmother, Elsa Schiaparelli, the Italian surrealist fashion designer who worked with Salvador Dali (but fortunately, was not murdered in a bizarre manner). All of this, no doubt, contributed to Perkins’s uncanny connection to King’s source material. “I’m older now and you realize this happens to everyone. Everyone dies,” Perkins tells Empire. “Sometimes in their sleep, sometimes in really crazy ways, like it happened to me. But everyone dies. And I thought maybe the best way to deal with this crazy idea was with a smile.”

“The Monkey” certainly seems ready to smile through the pain, and Perkins says that King himself saw the new film and “loved it.” A Brand new red band trailer It also highlights the strange humor of the story’s premise. “The monkey that likes to kill our family? He’s back,” Theo James Bell tells his brother Hal (also played by James) over the phone in the latest clips. It is quite a dead end which he says “must be overcome”. We also catch glimpses of some sinister (but darkly funny) killings, from a Scooby-Doo-like sea diver suit beating up someone in an antique shop to a scorpion crawling into a coffee cup. “It’s about ‘our time is short, the world is hard, messed up things happen,’” Perkins concludes. “But you have to move forward. You have to laugh. What else can you do?”

“The Monkey” hits theaters on February 21, 2025.