After making several of the best horror movies ever made, John Carpenter doesn’t owe anybody anything. However, when asked about future projects the legendary filmmaker might go for, another The Thing is a possibility.
The Hollywood Reporter spoke to Carpenter around the re-release of Escape of LA. To close, they asked about any other sequels he’d like to do. One sprung immediately to mind. “I would like to do a sequel to The Thing, or a continuation, something like that,” he says, before immediately backing away from the subject. “But I don’t know. See? There are a lot of things in this world I don’t know.”
Indeed, there are a lot of unknowns, but one known quantity is that The Thing is one of the best science fiction movies of all time. Kurt Russell leads the picture, about an Antarctica military outpost that’s besieged by a shapeshifting alien. The effects alone make it top-tier, throw in Russell and the rest of the cast’s acting, the tight, paranoid storytelling, and relentless atmosphere, and you have a true classic.
The bleak, ambiguous ending doesn’t necessitate a sequel; a spin-off, or other project set in the universe from the master himself? Count us in. We’ll take as much Carpenter as we can get.
That said, it doesn’t sound like Carpenter’s in any rush. And why should he be? He’s enjoying the royalties for the Halloween movies, and playing Assassin’s Creed games. When you make films like the original Halloween, The Thing, Escape from New York, They Live, and Big Trouble in Little China, you’ve earned your retirement.