‘The Thing’ Sequel is a Prequel
Director Marc Abraham (Flash of Genius) told Latino Review that progress has been slow but steady on his prequel to John Carpenter’s The Thing.
"This is more of a prequel than a sequel, there is your exclusive. Its going to be taking place in the same time frame,"he told the site. These are the events leading up to the 1982 film.”
The Thing from Another World was originally a novella by the great science fiction author and editor John W. Campbell. Published as Who Goes There? in 1938, the novella was adapted into The Thing by Charles Lederer, Howard Hawks, and Ben Hecht into the 1951 thriller. While the film was credited to Christian Nyby, Hawks did a great deal of unaccredited work behind the camera as well.
Carpenter remade the film in 1982 sticking closer to the original story and it starred both Kurt Russell and the effects from wizard Rob Bottin.
The story tells of a shape-shifting alien freed from its icy prison near a scientific research station in the remote Antarctic. After it killed a Norwegian team, an American team is sent in to investigate what happens and the story begins. The new film looks like it will go back and explore what happened first.
Carpenter's ending, however, was rather different from Campbell's original story, which was very much in the same vein as the last line of Heinlein's Puppet Masters (from memory, possibly a touch off): Monsters, free men are coming to kill you!