THE THINGPREQUEL AIMS TO REPLICATE WORLD OF ORIGINAL FILM Almost 30 years after the release of The Thing,
Universal Pictures has announced that a prequel to John Carpenter’s 1982 film will hit theatres on April 29, 2011. The new film, also tentatively titled The Thing, centres on a team of researchers at a remote Norwegian outpost who accidentally un- earth a parasitic alien presence while investigating a spaceship frozen into the Antarctic tundra. This may sound like the latest in a rash of Hollywood remakes, but according to executive producer David Foster, a revisit to The Thing universe has been in the works since the late ’80s. “This is a completely different story,” asserts
Foster, who also produced the original film. “It’s what led up to the destruction of the Norwegian camp, how it happened and why. It’s not a re- make, it’s a prequel. This is a picture that stands alone. You don’t have to have seen the first one to understand this one.” Speaking from the Toronto set of the new film,
which stars Joel Edgerton (Star Wars II – Attack of the Clones) and Mary Elizabeth Winstead (Scott Pilgrim vs. The World), Foster explains that the project grew out of a planned TV miniseries for the Syfy network, with Frank Darabont (The Mist, The Walking Dead) directing, but once Universal caught wind of what its television subsidiary had in the works, it requisitioned the rights for a fea- ture film. Though Foster has revisited the direc- tor’s material before with The Fog (2005), the veteran producer had no luck getting Carpenter to return for a prequel. “John’s attitude is amazing,” notes Foster. “He
said, ‘Yeah, go ahead, make me rich. He personally will never remake any of his films. He says, ‘I’ve done them once, that was my vision of the film. I’d be happy to be a producer with you, work to- gether on the script but I don’t want to talk to the director, if it’s possible, because I don’t want to in- sult him and I don’t want him to think I’m looking over his shoulder. If another director was looking
Joel Edgerton and Mary Elizabeth Winstead on the set of The Thing (2011).
over my shoulder while I was doing a movie, I’d kick him in the ass.’” To that end, Dutch commercial director Matthijs
Van Heijningen Jr. was tapped to helm the prequel, which was shot mostly in and around Toronto this past spring, with some exterior shooting at the same locations in Stewart, British Columbia that were used for Carpenter’s film. “I saw [the original] when I was seventeen or
something and I always wondered why they never made a sequel, why nobody took the opportunity to do it earlier,” says Van Heijningen Jr., whose pitch to the studio was for the movie “to be shot like Alien and have the same paranoia as the [Carpenter] movie.” While there’s certainly no shortage of admiration
for the source material among the cast and crew, Van Heijningen Jr. says the one thing that will set his movie apart is the emphasis on character develop- ment.
“I think you’re going to see a movie about real
people that you’re really going to care about, and you’re going to be hurt when you see those people die, when you see them fighting for their life.” Producer Eric Newman (Dawn of the Dead re-
make, Slither and The Last Exorcism) says the pre- quel is intended to be a companion piece and that the ending of this Thing should butt up against the beginning of the original. “I’ve watched [the 1982 film] 150 times now and
it’s so good,” says Newman. “The reason to do this was to tell a story that fit into the Carpenter universe, and we had to be aware of everything that happened in that movie. ... It’s a nightmare that gets worse and worse for the characters.” He adds, “They’re definitely big shoes to fill but
we feel like everything we’ve done honours the orig- inal.”
TREVOR TUMINSKI
RM8 D R E A D L I N E S
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