'Galactica' Writer Ronald D. Moore Updates 'The Thing' Prequel

A lot of people are or have been up in arms about a proposed visit to the land of John Carpenter's The Thing. At first, there was some speculation on exactly what that film would be, a remake, a sequel, or a prequel. But nobody should've been that upset; Carpenter's movie is itself a remake of sorts of a 1951 film called The Thing from Another World. Even if fans were still irrationally peeved, the news that Battlestar Galactica writer Ronald D. Moore was handling the project should have eased those worries. Now Moore tells Sci-Fi Wire where that project is headed. "I was working on The Thing. I finished," he confirmed. "I did my last draft a few weeks ago and turned it in. They [Universal Pictures] seem happy. They have a director [Matthijs Van Heijningen] assigned, and we'll wait to see when and if they green-light it." It's hard to imagine that Universal wouldn't want to jump all over this. Should that studio pass, there will certainly be other suitors. Moore went on to explain that his new project should be viewed as another chapter of the same story rather than that same story revamped.

"Well, the idea was to make a companion piece to Carpenter's. I started on the project with the feeling that Carpenter's version is just an amazing piece of work. It's a great film, and we really wanted to honor that version. We wanted a piece that would link up to [the Carpenter film] and not supplant it. So we didn't try to sort of completely reinvent what it was. We wanted a movie that would sort of live alongside it."

I trust Moore's instincts, and trust that he's fully aware of of the history of The Thing, so I would expect great things. That's subject to change, of course, but it's the right writer for the right project. It's definitely one we'll keep our eye on.