Dev Patel didn’t plan to direct the upcoming action thriller Monkey Man, which he also cowrote and starred in.
“I took it to Neill Blomkamp, originally,” Patel said during a Q&A following Monkey Man’s March 2024 premiere at South By Southwest in Austin, Texas. “Me and Neill were talking, and he went, ‘Man I thought you should do this. You know every corner of it.’ And I was like, ‘I can’t do it.’ He goes, ‘You can.’ I reluctantly got pushed into the driver’s seat.”
After Patel stepped up to the plate, the film suffered multiple setbacks including coronavirus-related scheduling delays and budget issues.
“You see throughout this film, we didn’t have enough stuntmen,” Patel explained during the talk-back, noting that he killed “the same eight guys” repeatedly during the final sequences.
Without a solid distributor, things looked bleak during the post-production stage as well. But then Monkey Man got its miracle: Jordan Peele saw the film and liked it. Once Peele signed on as a producer, Universal Pictures followed.
Keep scrolling for everything to know about Patel’s directorial debut:
What Is ‘Monkey Man’ About?
Monkey Man follows Kid (Patel), a young man working in an underground fight club who seeks revenge against a group of corrupt leaders who are responsible for his mother’s death among other crimes against the less fortunate.
Although the film has been compared to the John Wick franchise, Patel told the Austin American Statesman in March 2024 that he drew inspiration from multiple action heroes.
“This film is born from my love of so much action cinema, from Bruce Lee to Sammo Hung to Jet Lee to Jackie Chan to the Korean cinema that totally changed my life,” the Slumdog Millionaire actor said. “And also Bollywood.”
While introducing the film at SXSW, Patel noted that he wanted to bring more authenticity to the genre.
“The action genre has been abused by the system,” he said. “You know, a quick buck, mindless s–t. I wanted to give it soul. Real trauma. Real pain. You guys deserve that. I wanted to infuse it with a little bit of culture.”
Is ‘Monkey Man’ Based on a Real Story?
Patel said at the film’s SXSW premiere that the idea for Monkey Man stemmed from the story of Hanuman, the half-human, half-monkey Hindu deity.
“Hanuman really captivated me. He has been sort of an emblem for my father and many in my family,” he said. “What baffled me growing up was this iconography of this super-strong being who could hold mountains in one hand and split his chest open. It reminded me of the iconography of Superman. I was like, ‘This is amazing, I wish the world knew about it.’”
Elements of the plot were also inspired by the 2012 gang rape and murder of a young woman on a bus in Delhi, India. Patel noted that he wanted to make a movie about “fighting for what’s right and what’s good.”
What Has Dev Patel Said About Making ‘Monkey Man’?
“I put everything into this,” Patel told the SXSW crowd of his first foray into directing. “I shot this film in the biggest slum in India, Covid hit, and the film went down. Everything that could have gone wrong, went wrong. And then [Peele] came along in the end. … He brushed the dust off and put it on the mantelpiece.”
Patel’s hard work was rewarded by a standing ovation at the end of the screening. In a video shared by Variety, he got emotional over the crowd’s praise.
What Injuries Did Dev Patel Get Making ‘Monkey Man’?
Patel suffered numerous physical injuries while filming Monkey Man, including a broken hand, broken toes and a torn shoulder.
“It was a huge problem to have your hand in a cast for the entire film,” Patel told USA Today in March 2024. “We put a screw in the hand and the doctor’s like, ‘You cannot put any weight on it or anything.’ I was like, ‘OK, OK.’ And then we carried on shooting. … We had to change all of the choreo to one-handed moves.”
What Has Jordan Peele Said About ‘Monkey Man’?
“This is a film that simply demands to be seen in a theater with a huge, raucous audience,” Peele told the audience at Monkey Man’s SXSW premiere. “It’s a movie that proves that films can be all things. You can have a movie that tells an amazing story, that has meaning, that has depth, and you still can just kick a bunch of people’s [butts] along the way.”
Patel told USA Today that Peele championing the film felt like “that scene in Pretty Woman” when Julia Roberts’ character returns to an upscale boutique dressed to the nines to tell off a woman who previously wouldn’t let her shop there.
“I was Julia Roberts [but] covered in blood with a knife,” Patel quipped.
Who Is in the Cast of ‘Monkey Man’?
In addition to Patel, the cast of Monkey Man consists of Indian actors Pitobash, Vipin Sharma, Sikander Kher, Sobhita Dhulipala, Ashwini Kalsekar and Makarand Deshpande, and South African actor Sharlto Copley, whom Patel previously worked with on the 2015 film Chappie.
When Is ‘Monkey Man’ Coming Out?
The film hits theaters on April 5, 2024.
