FIRST PICS: The Thing Prequel

You know, we’re still trying to get our heads round how this “prequel” can really be any more than a remake under a different name, and these pics don’t really dispel that notion.

Directed by Matthijs van Heijningen Jr, with a script co-written by Battlestar Galactica ’s Ron Moore, this “prequel” to John Carpenter’s seminal 1982 remake of 1951’s The Thing From Another World (you following this?) may turn out to have a real ace twist up its shapeshifting sleeve, but at the moment it still sounds like another remake. Having said that, it could be a good remake, it just feels a little bit superfluous. Here’s hoping it proves us wrong.

It stars Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Joel Edgerton, Eric Christian Olsen ( Tru Calling ) and Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje ( Lost ’s Mr Eko) and will opens in the US on 29 April, 2011. The official plot synopsis has a familiar feel about it:
“Antarctica: an extraordinary continent of awesome beauty. It is also home to an isolated outpost where a discovery full of scientific possibility becomes a mission of survival when an alien is unearthed by a crew of international scientists. The shape-shifting creature, accidentally unleashed at this marooned colony, has the ability to turn itself into a perfect replica of any living being. It can look just like you or me, but inside, it remains inhuman. In the thriller The Thing, paranoia spreads like an epidemic among a group of researchers as they're infected, one by one, by a mystery from another planet.

“Paleontologist Kate Lloyd (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) has traveled to the desolate region for the expedition of her lifetime. Joining a Norwegian scientific team that has stumbled across an extraterrestrial ship buried in the ice, she discovers an organism that seems to have died in the crash eons ago. But it is about to wake up.

“When a simple experiment frees the alien from its frozen prison, Kate must join the crew's pilot, Carter (Joel Edgerton), to keep it from killing them off one at a time. And in this vast, intense land, a parasite that can mimic anything it touches will pit human against human as it tries to survive and flourish.”

You can see bigger, h--res versions of all these pics over at Blastr .

Dave is a TV and film journalist who specializes in the science fiction and fantasy genres. He's written books about film posters and post-apocalypses, alongside writing for SFX Magazine for many years.