Saw this article over on the LATimes web site wondering if 'The Thing' prequel can save Universal studios and whatnot. Anyway, here's some stuff about the movie and how it's different from the original:
So what makes "The Thing" different? First off, the film isn't so much a remake as a prequel, or what the producers are calling a companion piece to the original. As "Thing" fans may recall, early in the film, trying to understand why a Norwegian helicopter had been chasing a runaway husky before it crashed, Kurt Russell returns to the Norwegian base camp where he finds evidence that its research team -- now all dead -- had dug something out of the ice, apparently awakening an extraterrestrial creature that had been buried for thousands of years.
"That's the story we tell in this film," says Marc Abraham, who is producing the movie with his Strike Entertainment partner Eric Newman. "We go back to that original Norwegian camp and try to figure out what happened. It's like a crime scene, with an ax in the door, and the audience gets to be the detective, trying to piece together what horrible things have occurred."
Abraham and Newman have street cred when it comes to doing remakes, since they were the team that made "Dawn of the Dead," the successful 2004 update of the George Romero horror classic. Made at Universal, where the producers have their deal, the film satisfied fans of the original, made nearly $100 million worldwide and launched the career of Zack Snyder, who went on to make the mega hit "300."
"So after 'Dawn of the Dead,' Universal basically came to us and said, 'Everyone is remaking everything, what do we have that might be good?'" Newman told me recently. "The great thing is that Universal has all sorts of good titles. After all, they're the studio that essentially created the monster movie genre."
The producers were intent on achieving what you might call low-budget veracity. (The film is budgeted at roughly $38 million, with much of that going for its special effects.)
It could be another year before we see if Universal has a potential hit on its hands, since the film, which will shoot in British Columbia (for its Antarctic exteriors) and Toronto, probably won't make it into theaters until the first half of 2011. But at least the filmmakers are aiming high. "One of our all-time favorite films is Ridley Scott's 'Alien,' " says Abraham. "It's elegant, really scary and has characters that you care about. In a way, it's our model for this project, which gives us an opportunity to try to do something cool."
It also says they got Carpenter's blessing to do the prequel as well.
& for those wondering about the lack of Norwegians:
From a studio standpoint, the great thing about genre films is that they don't need star talent, so the new "Thing" has a cast of relative unknowns, the most familiar names being Mary Elizabeth Winstead and Joel Edgerton. In their quest for authenticity -- and with an eye toward helping the film play overseas -- the cast is populated with actors from Australia, England, Canada and Norway. In fact, a majority of the Norwegian scientists in the film are played by Norwegian actors, who will play their scenes in Norwegian, with English subtitles.
Rest of the article:
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/the...emake-help-stop-universals-losing-streak.html
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