Blumhouse Productions and filmmaker John Carpenter are developing a reboot of Carpenter’s 1982 horror classic “The Thing,” Variety has confirmed. The project is still in early stages, and no other details have been hammered out.
Carpenter first revealed the news on Saturday on a panel for the Fantasia International Film Festival. During the interview, Carpenter discussed finishing the score to “Halloween Kills,” a sequel to the 2018 reboot of another Carpenter favorite. That film, produced by Blumhouse and directed by David Gorden Green, was recently pushed to 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Later in the Q&A, Carpenter was asked if he had talked with Blumhouse chief Jason Blum about directing any projects himself.
“I have? I don’t know about that,” Carpenter said. “But we’ve talked about — I think he’s going to be working on ‘The Thing,’ rebooting ‘The Thing.’ I’m involved with that, maybe. Down the road.”
Carpenter declined to reveal whether the project would be a prequel, sequel or remake.
The core story of “The Thing” — about an Antarctic research team contending with a parasitic alien life form that can imitate other people — has been revisited a few times in Hollywood. It’s based on the 1938 novella “Who Goes There?” by John W. Campbell Jr.
The first was a 1951 RKO Radio Pictures movie under the title “The Thing from Another World.” Carpenter’s version starred Kurt Russell and Keith David and was initially a critical and box office disappointment. But the film’s grisly creature effects and tense story of the futility of paranoia helped make it a cult sensation among horror fans, and it is widely regarded as one of Carpenter’s finest.
In 2011, Universal released a prequel by the same title starring Mary Elizabeth Winstead and Joel Edgerton and directed by Matthijs van Heijningen, but without Carpenter’s creative involvement. It opened to mixed reviews and muted box office.