It must be poster day in Hollywood. No one told me or I’d have dressed up. Thanks to Universal, there’s a new teaser poster for the “prelude” to John Carpenter’s 1982 sci-fi classic, The Thing.  Let me say that again, it is not a remake, it’s a PREQUEL, even though it is also titled, The Thing and even though it also follows the discovery of an extraterrestrial ship with an organism on board buried deep in Antarctica and then the researchers that discover the organism take it back to their base camp where they find out it has the ability to shape shift. Hmmm, oh yeah I see the difference. (I’m aware sarcasm doesn’t work well in print so I’ll just tell you. That was sarcastic!) Seriously, the filmmakers wanted to make the stipulation because they were fans of Carpenter’s original and didn’t want to “paint a mustache on the Mona Lisa” by remaking it. Admirable. We’ll see.  There’s a much longer explanation at the film’s official website.

In any case, the PREQUEL stars one of our new boyfriends, Joel Edgerton (Warrior, Animal Kingdom) and for you Scott Pilgrim vs the World fans who fell in love with Mary Elizabeth Winstead, she’s in it too.  Dutch director Matthijs van Heijningen only has one other feature to his credit (Red Rain, a Dutch thriller from 1996), but he has been attached to direct the Army of Darkness reboot.  Ahh, if it weren’t for remakes, reboots, prequels and preludes, where would all these up and coming talents find gainful employment? The rest of the cast includes 
Adewale Akinnuoy-Agbaje (“Lost”, Faster, Killer Elite) and a lot of Norwegians and Danes.

The Thing was originally set to be released in April, but was pushed back to the fall. It hits in the US & the UK on 14 October 2011.