I made fun of how 'The Thing' is being called a prequel. It pretty much looks like a remake to me (as well as a bunch of other bloggers. Google 'The Thing prequel remake'). It seems a little silly if not plain lofty to call the movie a prequel. But, that's what the producers are doing.
Was scanning the Wikipedia entry for 'The Thing' (2011) and came upon this:
After creating the Dawn of the Dead remake, producers Marc Abraham and Eric Newman began to look through the Universal Studios library to find new properties to work on. Upon finding John Carpenter's 1982 film The Thing, the two convinced Universal to create a prequel instead of a remake, as they found remaking Carpenter's film would be like "paint(ing) a mustache on the Mona Lisa"[16] Eric Newman explained; "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... And we really felt the same way about The Thing.
I'm not sure they did much 'work' outside of tweaking the script a bit.
Of course, I could be wrong. The new 'The Thing' could be a stunningly original prequel just like they're claiming. Maybe it's a gripping telling of how the monster got frozen in that block of ice in the first place, and the horrendous (and very original) events that led to the demise of the (other) research station before the beginning of John Carpenter's movie. Maybe the fact that the 'prequel' trailer happens to contain every major plot point from Carpenter's movie is a non-factor. Prequels can do that, I'm sure.
I guess I can understand Universal's motive. You can just rent/stream the 1982 'The Thing' for 99 cents (or dig through your old DVDs and/or VHS tapes for a copy or two). So, why pay full price to see a remake at the theater? However, a (strikingly original) prequel... Now that's worth full price!
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