You Can Revisit 2024’s Horror Films with Osgood Perkins and Elijah Wood During the Super Bowl

Talk about scary good counter-programming. IndieWire can announce that genre auteur Osgood Perkins, who wrote and directed the hit 2024 outing “Longlegs” and the upcoming horror film “The Monkey,” will co-host a special Super Bowl halftime show dedicated to dissecting the best scary movies of the past year.

Perkins will be joined by his “The Monkey” actor Elijah Wood for the “Horror Halftime Show,” a special Dead Meat episode led by Dead Meat creators James A. Janisse and Chelsea Rebecca. The Super Bowl will take place Sunday, February 9, with the Dead Meat’s “Horror Halftime Show” airing live from the Dead Meat Presents YouTube channel during the Super Bowl Halftime.

Taking inspiration from late legendary football coach and sports commentator John Madden, Dead Meat’s “Horror Halftime Show” will be the “ultimate twisted event for horror fans to celebrate the past year of exceptional horror filmmaking,” as the press statement reads.

Perkins, Wood, Janisse, and Rebecca will “review top horror films, kills, and scares, complete with slow motion, frame by frame commentary” and break down the filmmaking aspects of the genre. The inaugural show will be a mix of horror and comedy, much like Perkins’ latest Neon film “The Monkey,” which will hit theaters on Friday, February 21.

Despite its horror bonafides, 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,” Perkins 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 fucking 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.”

“The Monkey” stars Theo James as twins Bill and Hal, who discover their dad’s old monkey toy in the attic. Unbeknownst to them, the mysterious wind-up monkey caused a series of outrageous deaths that tore their family apart. Twenty-five years later, and the monkey begins a new killing spree, forcing the estranged brothers to confront the cursed toy. A clip was recently shared to tease the haunting horror feature. Wood, Tatiana Maslany, Christian Convery, Colin O’Brien, Rohan Campbell, and Sarah Levy also star.

The film is based on Stephen King’s 1980 short story; James Wan produces. The trailer for “The Monkey” broke records to be the most viewed independent horror trailer of all time. It landed over 43 million views globally within 24 hours of dropping online, and quickly surpassed 100 million views in its first 72 hours, surging past 109 million global views across all platforms to date. 

“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. The film was Neon’s highest-grossing movie ever and one of the top-grossing horror movies of 2024.

Perkins already has a third feature set at Neon, but details remain under wraps. “Longlegs” was Perkins’ first feature with the distributor.