Warning: Contains SPOILERS for The Thing!
Summary
The Thingis one of the best ofJohn Carpenter’s classic movies, and making a sequel show to it sounds genius. It has been over four decades since the beloved 1982 sci-fi horror film was released, and despite the movie only growing in popularity, a sequel still hasn’t been made. AThe Thingprequel was released in 2011, with it following the other Arctic base that is mentioned in the film, butThe Thing’s cliffhanger ending has never been truly resolved. However, it turns out that there may have been a unique plan to continueThe Thingfranchise.
ScreenRant is atSan Dieco Comic-Con 2024, catching up on all the newest movie and TV show announcements, including a surprise reveal aboutThe Thingfranchise’s history.SDCC 2024’s bigThe Thingrevealcame thanks toCollider’sProducers on Producers panel at the expo, withThe Strangersproducer Roy Lee explaining that he andThe Shawshank Redemptiondirector Frank Darabont had onceworked on aThe Thingsequel show. Sadly, the show never ended up getting made. Here are Roy Lee’s full comments from SDCC 2024:
“I was with Frank Darabont after he’d done The Walking Dead. We were working on a sequel series for The Thing, which was picking up in the present day after the events of The Thing actually happened. It was done as a series, and he wanted to do it like The Walking Dead and turn it into a thing set in the U.S., but we never got it off the ground. We got a script written, but the studio hated it.”
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The Thing Sequel Show Would Be The Best Way To Continue The Story
It Works Better Than A Movie
IfThe Thing’s story were to be continued, a sequel TV series would be the best way to continue the story. Atthe end of the originalThe Thing, it is left ambiguous as to if one of the two survivors has been replicated by the titular shapeshifting alien. However, the film had previously set up the threat that The Thing could escape the Arctic wasteland and make it back to human civilization, meaning that it could assimilate all of Earth in a terrifyingly short time.
Due to this story setup,a sequel toThe Thingwould have to be on a much larger scale than the original movie. Thus, the longer running time of a TV show is perfect for a continuation. AThe ThingTV show would allow the story to explore how Earth as a whole responds to The Thing’s invasion, highlighting the first contact with civilization, the government’s attempts to control The Thing’s spread, and the alien’s ever-increasing grasp on the world. Instead of focusing on The Thing fighting a few scientists again, the show would focus on The Thing fighting Earth.
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What The Thing Sequel Show Would Have Been About
Is It The Same As The Canceled Miniseries?
Roy Lee did not elaborate on what hisThe Thingsequel show would have been about while speaking about it at SDCC 2024. However, there were plans for a four-partThe Thingminiseries that didn’t come to fruition, with Frank Darabont producing it andThe Walking Dead’s David Leslie Johnson-McGoldrick writing it. While there isn’t a confirmed connection between the two shows, the fact that Frank Darabont worked on both of them means that the story could have been very similar.
The four-partThe Thingminiseries would have seen agroup of Russians recover the bodies ofThe Thing’s two survivors, MacReady and Childs. They bring these two bodies, as well as what is left of The Thing, away from the arctic base, with the series then jumping 23 years into the future and exploring The Thing’s attempts to escape and take over humanity. This story seems like a logical extension ofThe Thing’s controversial ending, with it also having the potential to keep the original movie’s ending vague.
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Why The Thing Sequel Never Happened
Although there have constantly beentalks ofThe Thingsequelssince the original’s release, nothing has ever come to fruition. A movie sequel toThe Thinghas been talked about at various points, although Universal’s first attempts to make a sequel was halted by the critical and commercial disappointment of the 2011The Thingprequel. However, Universal and Blumhouse announced that they were developing a sequel toThe Thingin 2020, withJohn Carpenter teasingThe Thing 2as recently as 2023.
As for Roy Lee’s aforementionedThe Thingsequel series, the producer went on at SDCC 2024 to say that, despite a script being written,studios just weren’t interested. It is known that the four-partThe Thingminiseries was passed on in favor of aThe Thingmovie sequel that never happened, and while the relationship between the two shows is a bit ambiguous, it is possible that Lee’s version suffered the same fate as well. AlthoughThe Thingsequels have had a troubled history, one will inevitably happen someday.
The Thing
Cast
A team of researchers set out to study an alien spacecraft found in Antarctica, where they also discover an alien body on the site. The alien buried in ice is actually alive and has the ability to imitate human form. The group must find a way to distinguish who the real person is from The Thing and stay alive. John Carpenter’s 1982 film is a remake of 1951’s The Thing from Another World and stars Kurt Russel as the hero RJ MacReady.
