20 Things You Didn't Know About The Thing
7. Tobe Hooper Was Considered To Direct
Even more so than the indelible two-hander of Kurt Russell and Keith David, it's tough to picture anyone but John Carpenter directing this movie, and he was certainly the first choice of producers Lawrence Turman and David Foster.
However, Universal had other ideas in the early developmental stages, feeling that Tobe Hooper, who they already had under contract, might be a better fit for the material.
Hooper even wrote two drafts of the screenplay himself - designed as a horror-comedy without the shapeshifting element - neither of which made a dent with executives.
After the success of Halloween, Universal hired Carpenter, causing The Thing's co-producer Stuart Cohen to later comment of Hooper's original version, "We avoided a disaster...It would've been one of the worst movies ever made." Yikes.