October 7th, 2010
Earlier this week, we took you behind the scenes of Universal Pictures upcoming prequel to John Carpenter's now classic alien horror film The Thing starring Kurt Russell. The upcoming film, also entitled The Thing, is directed by Dutch filmmaker Matthijs van Heijningen Jr. and is scheduled for release next spring. Last June, we had a chance to travel to the film's set in Toronto, Canada, tour the massive sound stages, and speak with producer Marc Abraham (Children of Men).
This new movie takes place at the base camp of the Norwegian science-team that was seen in the first film, and is where the alien spacecraft was found. Mary Elizabeth Winstead stars as Katie, a paleontologist who travels to Antarctica and joins the Norwegian science-team just as they discovered the alien spaceship buried in the ice. Inside, they find a strange frozen creature with the ability to take the form of anyone it touches. When the monster escapes from its frozen cell, Katie must join forces with a pilot named Carter (Joel Edgerton) in order to destroy the creature before paranoia sets in, and they all kill each other. The film will lead up to the events of John Carpenter's movie, and should give fans a different take on what happened right before the first film began.
In the second half of our visit to the set, we had the opportunity to speak with the film's stars Mary Elizabeth Winstead (Scott Pilgrim Vs. the World) and Joel Edgerton (Animal Kingdom), as well as tour the Norwegian base camp set. And we even got to watch them film a scene with a real flamethrower!
After we were done talking with Marc Abraham, the producer took us on a tour inside the Norwegian base camp set where we had a chance to watch some filming. The set looks very cool and you can tell that the filmmakers have gone to a lot of effort to make sure that it matches what we saw in the original. While we can't say too much about what we witnessed them shooting, as it would give away particular plot points, we'll just say that the scene involved actress Mary Elizabeth Winstead using a flamethrower in a nod to the original movie. It was really fun to watch, and the entire crew was extremely focused due to the safety issues involved.
We followed up by asking if some of the epic sequences in the film happen inside the ship? "Yeah, well what's cool is, again, sitting down with Matthijs and getting to imagine the world, even the rules that were already given in the Carpenter film. You see a spaceship in the first one. We see it arrive on earth, and then you see the Norwegians celebrate around it. So I just think it must have been cool for the writers and those guys to sit down and imagine the tools to tell this story. We're not doing anything that breaks the boundaries of what was set up, but I have a feeling they're doing it in the most imaginative way without taking too many liberties," he explained. Finally, as a fan of the original, we asked Edgerton if there were any moments that he shot for the movie where he totally geeked-out because of that scenes implications to the Carpenter film? "Well, there's a couple because I was really curious in the beginning about how they were going to do the axe, how they were going do a certain character committing suicide and where does the film end? Does it end with chasing the dog? So every kind of point along the way I was wondering, how are they going to explain this? Also, this is it's own film," he explained. "You don't want to put so much energy into tying those loose ends that you damage this film, as its own entity. I think they've done a really good job of it. I reckon the fans of the original movie are going to really like those moments."
The Thing comes to theaters April 29th, 2011 and stars Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Joel Edgerton, Jonathan Walker, Kim Bubbs, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje. The film is directed by Matthijs van Heijningen Jr..
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