Joel Edgerton discusses new Thing

With production on Matthijs van Heijningen’s new Thing movie officially in full swing, star of the show Joel Edgerton has been discussing what we can expect from the flick.

While out promoting the release of The Square , directed by his brother Nash, Edgerton had a chat with Shock Til You Drop about the film, which is going under the simple working title The Thing .

First up, he confirmed that it’s definitely “a prequel”, with the Norwegian base at the film’s centre “modelled on the base you see in the [ John ] Carpenter film”.

“Being a prequel you’ll see a lot of tie-ins as to how the base comes to be the way it is in the Carpenter film,” he says. “Being so destroyed, and that evidence you see in the Carpenter film, we’ll get a glimpse into that.”

Edgerton goes on to say that the prequel can stand entirely on its own for the three people out there who haven’t seen Carpenter’s masterful version, but there are sly winks for those who have seen and love it.

“This film will stand up as a story,” he confirms. “For anyone who has not seen the original, it will just be a self-contained film, but it also has a lot of curious links and snaps of the old movie for the people who are fans or are familiar with the Carpenter movie.”

In terms of his director’s ambition, the actor reveals that van Heijningen’s not “trying to reinvent the [ Carpenter ] film, he’s certainly not trying to eclipse the film”. Neither, apparently, is he trying to remake it.

“What Universal and Matthijs are trying to do is make a partner piece to The Thing ,” says Edgerton, “while also reinventing the aspect of - modern filmmaking has come a long way - so I guess they’re paying respect to the original while bringing a new time and different [ approach ] without throwing away what they did in the past.”

Think you can groove with this Thing ?