Worrying comments printed by
Bloody Disgusting from Eric Heisserer on Thursday, the man currently re-writing
Ronald D. Moore's original draft for a prequel to
John Carpenter's suspenseful masterpiece
The Thing, hints that he is doing a paint by numbers job of making sure the origins of all the elements contained in the original film are explained in full detail in his script. A script he claims could be ready for Dutch director
Matthijs van Heijningen Jr. as early as January...
Its a really fascinating way to construct a story because were doing it by autopsy, by examining very, very closely everything we know about the Norwegian camp and about the events that happened there from photos and video footage thats recovered, he continues, from a visit to the base, the director, producer and I have gone through it countless times marking, you know, theres a fire axe in the door, we have to account for thatwere having to reverse engineer it, so those details all matter to us cause it all has to make sense.
Which to me sounds very close into entering
Gus Vant Sant and
Psycho territory. It's that kind of forced methodical planning that devalues creative thought, and instead works as a fun lateral thinking exercise but not particularly one that forms good storytelling.
We explain how it got there, he continues referring to the axe, adding that he found a way to bring suspense back to the film. Were finding so much from Carpenters movie that you think youve seen, but in actually it allows us to come up with certain twists on what we have that will allow people to be on the edge of their seat, and not know whos going to make it and whos not.
And is it just me, or is a prequel set in the same Norweigen camp, with a similar sized crew who become victim of alien shape shifting
"The Thing", in reality, simply function as a remake with even more restrictions (as you need it to tie in with an already packaged film, instead of being allowed to divert into new avenues if you wished) and less of a chance of success? via -
/film