You’ve known a prequel to The Thing
was in the works, but perhaps you’ve been lulled into a false sense of
security by the relative lack of movement lately. The quiet project has
started to rear it’s ugly, dog-mutilating tentacle… appendage…
things though, and has set shooting dates. The twitter feed for Production Weekly has revealed that it shall be Toronto’s icy tundra that hosts the production and that it will be lensing from March to June.
There’s
little else to report at this point except to remind you that we’ll be
seeing the events leading up to a mysterious dog jog, as scripted by
Star Trek and Battlestar Galactica scribe Ronald D. Moore, rescripted
by Eric Heisserer (who wrote the impending Elm Street remake), and
directed by newcomer Matthijs van Heijningen Jr.
I don’t think anyone is really sweating this prequel, but The Thing is a bit of a sacred treasure ‘round these parts, so expect us to keep a sharp eye on this project.
UPDATE: Looking around a bit more, I found that the fine fellows at Bloody Disgusting managed a few months back to get words with the prequel’s director, who refused to comment one way or another on the rumors of a MacReady sibling’s involvement in the story, and had more to say on the creation of the story,
“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.”