Movies
Strike Entertainment Producers Call Making ‘The Thing’ “Irresistible”
Shooting is gearing up to begin in British Columbia and Toronto for Universal Pictures’ The Thing, a prequel to John Carpenter’s 1982 remake of The Thing from Another World (1951). Strike Entertainment producing team Marc Abraham and Eric Newman chatted with the LA Times about the alien-horror pic and a bit about how having the chance to tell this tale was “irresistible”.
“I’d be the first to say no one should ever try to do ‘Jaws’ again and I certainly wouldn’t want to see anyone remake ‘The Exorcist,’ ” Newman tells the LA Times. “And we really felt the same way about ‘The Thing.’ It’s a great film. But once we realized there was a new story to tell, with the same characters and the same world, but from a very different point of view, we took it as a challenge. It’s the story about the guys who are just ghosts in Carpenter’s movie — they’re already dead. But having Universal give us a chance to tell their story was irresistible.”
Penned by Eric Heisserer, in a remote Antarctica outpost, an alien spaceship is discovered far beneath the ice. When a group of ambitious scientists decide to thaw out one of the creatures inside, they’re in for the terrifying fight of their lives…
“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.”
Being helmed by Matthijs van Heijningen Jr., Mary Elizabeth Winstead and Joel Edgerton are signed on to star.
In the wake of Backrooms and Obsession, everyone is prowling YouTube for horror shorts to adapt and horror filmmakers to scoop up, so don’t be surprised to see a whole bunch of upcoming articles about YouTube success stories crossing over into theaters. One horror short that’s already been picked up for expansion is Dolly director Rod Blackhurst’s Alone Time.
The 12-minute short was uploaded in 2014 and has amassed nearly 2 million views at the time of this article being written, and Deadline reports that it’s getting a feature adaptation.
Witchcraft Motion Picture Company & Fever Dream will turn the viral short into a feature film.
Alone Time follows Ann Saunders, a young NY professional whose carefully constructed life begins to unravel following a devastating personal loss. “Seeking refuge from a collapsing relationship, a deteriorating family situation, and mounting emotional trauma, Ann reluctantly joins her closest friend on a remote camping trip deep in the Adirondack wilderness.”
The synopsis continues, “When her friend mysteriously disappears, Ann becomes convinced that an unseen figure is stalking her through the forest. What begins as a survival nightmare slowly transforms into something far more disturbing as fractured memories, conflicting realities, and hidden truths force Ann to confront the possibility that the greatest threat may not be lurking in the woods at all, but buried deep within her own psych.”
“Alone Time has quietly followed me for over a decade,” director Rod Blackhurst said in a statement. “What began as a short film about isolation and the weight of life now feels more relevant than ever. The original short found its audience organically online long before that was considered a legitimate path for filmmakers. Bringing it to life as a feature allows us to explore those themes on a much larger and more psychologically unsettling canvas.”
Blackhurst is directing the feature length expansion.
You can watch the original Alone Time short film below.