Matthijs van Heijningen’s prequel to John Carpenter’s 1982 THE THING (which we last reported on here) is filming in Toronto, and actor Joel Edgerton had a few things to say about the film.

If Edgerton’s name sounds familiar but you can’t quite place it, you might remember the actor’s turn as a young Owen Lars in the STAR WARS prequels. Speaking with Shock Til You Drop, Edgerton remarked, “Well, it’s a prequel, and definitely the Norwegian base is modeled on the base you see in the Carpenter film.

“Being a prequel, you’ll see a lot of tie-ins as to how the base comes to be the way it is in the Carpenter film, being so destroyed, and that evidence you see in the Carpenter film, we’ll get a glimpse into that. It’s great because you have a bunch of people behind making it—Eric Newman and Marc Abraham, the producers at Strike [Entertainment]—those guys and Matthijs, the director, they have such respect for the original film that they’re not trying to do a remake; they’re just trying to pay homage to the original and also do the right thing with what I think is a real cool way [of] doing that and revisiting the material.”

The story for the film follows a PhD candidate (BLACK CHRISTMAS’ Mary Elizabeth Winstead) who joins a Norwegian research team in Antarctica after it discovers an alien ship in the ice. When a trapped organism is freed and begins a series of attacks, she is forced to team with a blue-collar mercenary helicopter pilot (Edgerton) to stop the rampage.

Hey, at least it’s (technically) not a sequel or a remake! Stick around for more updates soon.

 

 

 

 

 

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