Carpenter's The Thing Prequel Will Remake Your Brain in Its Image

John Carpenter’s The Thing Gets a Prequel, 28 Years Later
By Brooke Ellis

Time has been kind to John Carpenter’s 1982 remake of the Howard Hawks classic The Thing From Another World named simply, The Thing. Originally released in the midst of the mania caused by Spielberg’s beloved E.T., audiences wanted their alien movies warm and fuzzy - causing Carpenter’s film to perform poorly at the box office. Fortunately, the movie has rightfully earned a massive cult fan base through the years to the point now where a prequel is in production.

An original draft scripted by Ronald D. Moore (who had successfully brought Battlestar Galactica back from the abyss) has the film serving as a companion piece to the ’82 version starring Kurt Russell. Fans were delighted when Moore explained, “We're telling the story of the Norwegian camp that found the Thing before the Kurt Russell group did, so it's very buried in the continuity… it's supposed to be the other story that you saw part of. So we didn't want to reinvent it. It was really much the opposite. We really wanted to have this flow seamlessly into what he did."

Since then, the production has moved forward with Eric Heissererhas taking over script duties, working from Moore’s screenplay. Eric recently performed an identical rewriting task for the new Nightmare on Elm Street and has since been tapped to write the next Final Destination picture. The problem I have with where this currently stands is not just that both Heissererhas and director Matthijs van Heijningen Jr. have very little previous experience (that’s right, I looked ‘em up on IMDB) but you can’t even pronounce their names!  “Car-pen-ter” “Moore”… I like the sound of those names much better. Easier to pronounce, easier to write.

Recognized now as a classic, a paranoia thriller fuelled by superb organic special effects, John Carpenter’s The Thing is a hard act to follow – er, I mean - precede, and that’s what makes this film such a gamble.

Comments (3)

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lil lost said:

	... Hope it's as good as the first one.
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April 09, 2011
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Padrehypnos said:

	... you forgot the comicbook sequel that John Carpenter said was pretty much what he wanted to see as a sequel to his movie
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November 18, 2010
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Shepp said:

	... Interesting. So we've got John Carpenter's movie, a video game sequel to it that picks up right where the movie leaves off, and now a prequel that leads right into the movie. Nicely done. I have a feeling that this prequel may borrow more elements from the original The Thing from Another World. I'm looking forward to it.
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October 03, 2010
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