Here’s
what we know about the highly-anticipated Thing
prequel thus far:
- It started filming on March 15 this year in Toronto.
- It is directed by Matthijs van Heijningen Jr.
- What did he direct? Um, commercials . . .
- The new movie is simply known as “The Thing.”
- It is indeed a prequel and not a sequel or a remake.
- It is set at the doomed Norwegian Antarctic base we
saw at the beginning of the 1982 movie. It focuses on the group of
scientists that thawed out the shape-shifting alien “Thing” from the ice
and got killed for their efforts.
- Script writer Eric Heisserer said in an interview
that they went to great lengths to be faithful to the events depicted in
the original movie:
“It’s a really fascinating way to construct a story
because were doing it by autopsy, by examining very, very closely
everything we know about the Norwegian camp and about the events that
happened there from photos and video footage that’s recovered from a visit
to the base. The director, producer and I have gone through it countless
times marking, you know, there’s a fire axe in the door, we have to
account for that . . . were having to reverse engineer it, so those
details all matter to us ‘cause it all has to make sense.”
- Here’s the official plot synopsis:
“In a remote Antarctica outpost, an alien spaceship is
discovered far beneath the ice. When a group of ambitious scientists
decide to thaw out one of the creatures inside, they're in for the
terrifying fight of their lives . . .”
- Eric Heisserer has rewritten the screenplay by Ronald
D. Moore (who did the recent
Battlestar Galactica
revival).
- Rumors have it that Moore’s draft featured the
brother of R.J. MacReady, who was played by Kurt Russell in the first
film. This character is no longer in the new movie.
- It may be a Norwegian base, but in fact only one of
the three main characters is actually Norwegian. The other two are both
English-speaking and one is American.
- So who are all the characters?
Dark Horizons provided the following handy synopsis:
“There's the 40-something expedition leader, a greedy
scientist with plans to use the creature for fame and fortune. There's the
ruggedly handsome 30-something pilot/mercenary who reminds the lead girl
of her father and becomes her partner. Then there's the girl herself whose
at constantly at odds with the expedition leader and becomes the woman who
must stop the Thing's potential escape to the outside.”
- For more info on all the characters, click
here.
We loved the underappreciated 1982 John Carpenter
classic, but think a remake will be pointless. Want to know how the movie
ends? They all die . . . Why not a sequel instead as the Thing is let
loose on nearby New Zealand? We’d pay good money to see that!
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