At this year's virtual edition of the Fantasia International Film Festival, John Carpenter was awarded the lifetime achievement award and discussed his career in a must-listen masterclass.
During the career-spanning segment, Carpenter revealed that he could be teaming with Jason Blum's Blumhouse Productions to develop a reboot of his 1982 cult classic The Thing, and now Variety has confirmed that the project is indeed in the "early stages" of development.
Further details are unknown at this time, and it's not known to what capacity Carpenter would be involved on the reboot. During the Fantasia chat, when asked if he has had conversations with Blum about getting back in the director's chair, he said:
“I have? I don’t know about that. But we’ve talked about—I think he’s going to be working on The Thing, rebooting The Thing. I’m involved with that, maybe. Down the road.”
As Variety mentions, The Thing reboot is still in the early stages of development, so we'll have to wait and see if it actually comes to fruition. Plot details are also unknown at this time, but as fans of the 1982 film know, Carpenter's version had an ambiguous ending that left the door open for plenty more extraterrestrial body horror.
If Carpenter and Blumhouse move forward on a reboot of The Thing, it would continue a working relationship that already includes their collaboration on the new Halloween movies, which John Carpenter executive produces and scores along with fellow composers Cody Carpenter and Daniel Davies.
Carpenter's The Thing, itself a remake of 1951's The Thing from Another World, is based on John W. Campbell Jr.'s novella Who Goes There?, which in 2019 was re-released as an expanded version called Frozen Hell.
We'll keep Daily Dead readers updated on The Thing reboot as more details are revealed. In case you missed it, we discussed Carpenter's The Thing on a previous episode of Corpse Club, and you can also watch the entire Fantasia masterclass with Carpenter below (courtesy of Fantasia)!
Raised on a steady diet of R.L. Stine’s Goosebumps books and Are You Afraid of the Dark?, Derek has been fascinated with fear since he first saw ForeverWare being used on an episode of Eerie, Indiana.
When he’s not writing about horror as the Senior News Reporter for Daily Dead, Derek can be found daydreaming about the Santa Carla Boardwalk from The Lost Boys or reading Stephen King and Brian Keene novels.
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