Is The Thing 2 Happening? John Carpenter Could Be Involved With A Sequel Or Reboot
John Carpenter's "The Thing" is a movie so cold you feel it in your bones as you watch it. Pitting a group of U.S. civilians at an Arctic research station against a shape-shifting alien that can convincingly imitate other living organisms, Carpenter's 1982 sci-fi/horror flick notoriously bombed upon its initial release in theaters. Over 40 years later, though, it's now justly regarded as a masterclass in genre filmmaking. With its incredibly gory practical creature effects (which are as gross as they ever were) and bleak-as-hell atmosphere, Carpenter's nihilistic exercise in paranoia has aged far more gracefully than the gung-ho Reagan-era entertainment the masses were flocking to at the time it was made.
As a film ahead of its time that would go on to find a much larger fanbase thanks to home media, it was inevitable that Carpenter's "The Thing" would return in some new form (pun sort of intended). But with the film's commercial failure having killed the prospect of an immediate film sequel, its story would instead continue in a series of Dark Horse comic books published in the early 1990s. Ever since then, there's been on-and-off talk of a movie sequel — one that would involve Carpenter in some kind of creative capacity. The real question is, would he go so far as to actually get off his couch to direct it?
To be clear, I'm not knocking him. Carpenter is one of the rare directors of a certain age who seems content to generally chillax and casually enjoy his twilight years, and for that, he has my respect. Nevertheless, he's shown signs of wanting to get back in the saddle lately, even going so far as to hint that a "Thing" film sequel or reboot is being actively developed. Here's what we know at the moment.
Why hasn't The Thing 2 happened yet?
You may not be aware, but "The Thing 2" nearly happened in 2005 as a miniseries on the Sci-Fi Channel (which has since been re-named Syfy). Had it gone forward, the show would have picked up six months after the haunting conclusion to Carpenter's film before jumping ahead 23 years. It wasn't hurting for horror bona fides either, with "The Shawshank Redemption" and "The Mist" director Frank Darabont — who got his start writing horror flicks like "A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors," "The Blob," and "The Fly II" in the '80s — producing and his former assistant David Leslie Johnson-McGoldrick (writer of "Orphan" and "The Conjuring 2") penning the script.
Universal would instead elect to develop "The Thing 2" as a feature film, only to scrap it in favor of a prequel that would tell the tale of the doomed scientists at the Norwegian research station whose remains were uncovered by the leads at the start of Carpenter's original. Also titled "The Thing" and directed by Matthijs van Heijningen Jr., the 2011 sci-fi/horror flick would prove to be both a critical and financial disappointment. It didn't help that an earlier cut featuring practical creature effects (like those in its predecessor) had been swapped out for flimsy CGI, nor that its plot was virtually identical to that of Carpenter's film (to the degree that some moviegoers didn't even realize it was a prequel until the very end).
Perhaps it's because the 2011 "Thing" has since gotten a second shot on Netflix. Or perhaps it's because of the never-ending nostalgia cycle that keeps sending Hollywood back to the same well. Whatever the case, it's 2023 and "The Thing 2" is once again providing harder to kill than, well, The Thing itself.
Everything John Carpenter has said about The Thing 2
Where many of his fellow New Hollywood filmmakers have spent the last decade busting out one new movie after another, Carpenter hasn't called the shots on a feature film since 2010's "The Ward." He has, however, continued to develop film scores recently, teaming up with his son Cody Carpenter and musician Daniel Davies to compose the music for David Gordon Green's "Halloween" trilogy, in addition to the 2022 film adaptation of the Steven King novel "Firestarter" (a book Carpenter himself nearly adapted for the screen after "The Thing"). Carpenter has also continued to frequent the fan convention circuit lately, which is how he wound up dropping this eyebrow-raising nugget at the 2023 Texas Frightmare Weekend:
"I have been sworn to secrecy, okay, because there may be, I don't know if there will be, there may be a 'Thing 2.'"
Three years prior to that at the 2020 Fantasia International Film Festival (via Bloody Disgusting), Carpenter indicated that Blumhouse would be involved with this mysterious "Thing" revival, stating, "I think [Jason Blum's] gonna be working on 'The Thing' ... rebooting 'The Thing.' I may be involved with that. Maybe. Down the road." It's also worth mentioning that Carpenter's use of "rebooting" could just as easily mean "The Thing" is getting a legacy sequel as it could a hard reset. Blumhouse certainly hasn't been opposed to developing the former, having previously produced Green's "Halloween" (a partial reboot that ignored all the "Halloween" films that came after Carpenter's OG slasher) and "The Exorcist: Believer."
Does that mean we're about to get a definite answer to one of the most hotly-debated ambiguous endings in film history? Maybe. Do we want an answer? Maybe. Maybe not. Why don't we just wait here for a little while. See what happens.