Tuesday, August 11, 2009

Screenwriter Talks Ideas For Prequel to The Thing



The forthcoming prequel/remake of John Carpenter’s The Thing, one of the best sci-fi horror pictures to come out of the ’80s, has caused no small amount of consternation. Ronald D. Moore (Battlestar Galactica) wrote a script which is currently being rewritten by Eric Heisserer, who also worked on a rewrite of the upcoming A Nightmare on Elm Street reboot. We haven’t known much about Moore and Heisserer’s approach to the story. Bloody Disgusting got a few comments about the approach and how Heisserer is ‘reverse engineering’ the story of the doomed Norwegian camp that dug up the shape-shifting alien that eventually battled Kurt Russell & Co.

From what we’re reading here, it looks like the prequel approach is still going forward. That means we’ll see the Norwegian research camp that dug up a crashed spaceship and the alien it once contained, and we’ll see that alien decimate the camp in much the same way it did an American outpost in John Carpenter’s movie.


I, for one, am tired of prequels. The original filmmakers gave us enough background to get their individual stories rolling - do we really need to go further back? Answer: NO, we don't. But it seems to be the convenient way for Hollywood suits to tie in the name recognition of a hit film, and it's been a nasty trend for a while now. Why not do something "in the same vein as"? Answer: Because then they wouldn't have the name to latch onto and lure the completist fans (present company included) in. Makes me crazy.

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