A Person in a Place Talks About The Thing

The prequel to John Carpenter's The Thing is one of those strange Hollywood projects that I simultaneously can't quite dismiss out of hand and can't truly support. It feels a bit like sacrilege to try and recapture the magic of Carpenter's classic, and yet the filmmakers are saying all the right things. The concept is intriguing and the talent behind the film is certainly nothing to laugh at...And so I'm left with equal parts hesitation and hope.

Our friends over at Shock Till You Drop recently had the chance to talk to one of the film's stars, Joel Edgerton, about the film, which has been in production for the last week. And dammit, everything he's saying gives us hope, as well!

"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 in to doing that, and revisiting the material...As with anything that has that much time between drinks, so to speak, is that this film will stand up as a story. For anyone who has not seen the original, it will just be a self-contained film, but it also has a lot of curious links and snaps of the old movie for the people who are fans or are familiar with the Carpenter movie."

Check out the complete interview and then head back to UGO for more on The Thing as it develops...