The Monkey director explains how a bizarre copyright issue actually improved the comedy horror movie: "Thanks, Disney!"

If you grew up reading horror or have seen the trailer for Longlegs director Osgood Perkins' new movie The Monkey, you'll know it's based on Stephen King's short story of the same name. What you might not know, though, is that the film will forever share a bizarre connection to a Disney Pixar flick...

While the eponymous ape menacingly clangs cymbals together in the source material, the team behind the adaptation had to depict it banging a drum. "When I was given the assignment, the producer said, 'Oh, by the way, Disney owns the cymbals, because of [the toy monkey in] Toy Story,'" Perkins reveals in the new issue of SFX magazine, which features Daredevil: Born Again on the cover and hits newsstands on January 29.

"So it [couldn't] be cymbals. What if it was a drum? It's one of those things where a limitation becomes an opportunity. 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!"

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Starring She-Hulk's Tatiana Maslany, Lord of the Rings' Elijah Wood, Sweet Tooth's Christian Convery, and The White Lotus's Theo James, The Monkey sees twin brothers Hal and Bill Sheldon forced to patch up their rocky relationship and set out on a mission of revenge, after the sinister simian from their childhood starts violently offing everyone they come into contact with again.

"Stranger Things kind of cornered the market on 'It's like movies from the '80s, it's like Gremlins, it's like Spielberg!' – and it did it so well and so successfully," Perkins explains. "Initially the movie that I wrote was set in the '80s, with the childhood stuff in the '50s, because that felt very Stephen King to me. But of course It already did that, and Stranger Things took that away, so we moved it to the '90s and the present."

The Monkey releases on February 21. Read more in the latest issue of SFX magazine, which will be available from Wednesday, January 29. Check out the Daredevil: Born Again cover to look for on newsstands below...