Details

Release year: 2011

Storyline

A group of scientists researching an alien spaceship found in the Antarctic come face to face with the ship's, not quite dead, occupant.

Top credits

Directors

Matthijs van Heijningen Jr.

Writers

Cast

Mary Elizabeth Winstead — Kate Lloyd
Joel Edgerton — Carter
Ulrich Thomsen — Dr. Sander Halvorson
Eric Christian Olsen — Adam Finch

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Did you know

• The producers convinced Universal Studios to allow them to create a prequel to John Carpenter's The Thing (1982) instead of a remake, as they felt Carpenter's film was already perfect, so making a remake would be like "painting a mustache on the Mona Lisa". However, the prequel still has the title of the original film, because they couldn't think of a subtitle (for example, "The Thing: Begins") that sounded good.

• (at around 1h 16 mins) The red axe that Joel Edgerton's character uses and eventually sticks into the wall can be seen still stuck in the wall when the Americans visit the Norwegian camp in the original John Carpenter version.

• Due to constant studio interference, director Matthijs van Heijningen Jr. had such a negative experience with the film that he claimed to have lost his passion for filmmaking, and retired for nearly a decade. One of the issues was that he had to battle with five or six different studio executives in charge of the project, which made it difficult to make any creative decisions. At one point, production was shut down for a week because Universal wanted the film to be in 3D, and the release was eventually pushed back six months for studio-mandated re-shoots. Although van Heijningen has since made the acclaimed war movie The Forgotten Battle (2020) for Netflix and has also been working on films in Norway, he has vowed never to work with an American studio again.