The Thing: John Carpenter Perfectly Dodges Offering Details on Blumhouse Reboot

The Thing movie franchise is getting a big reboot film – but don’t ask John Carpenter about it because he has no involvement with it. Carpenter was doing an interview with SYFY WIRE for the 40th anniversary of his groundbreaking cult-classic 1982 version of The Thing, starring Kurt Russell and Keith David, and was, not surprisingly, asked about what’s going on with the new version of The Thing that’s in development over at Blumhouse Pictures and answered in the way that only John Carpenter can.

“What the hell do I know? That’s the theme of my career. Write [this] down… John Carpenter: ‘What the hell do I know?’ No one tells me anything,” the filmmaker shared.

Not only did John Carpenter make it crystal clear that he has nothing to do with The Thing reboot, he went on to make it clear that he won’t do any speculation about it – nor would he even share a single idea of his own for where the franchise could go next. He teased, “I’m not gonna tell you that. That would be something I would figure out and do and then you would discover it in the movie theater.”

So there you have it — John Carpenter is as old school as it gets when it comes to discussing a movie that’s in the works – which is to say, not at all. 

It’s no wonder that John Carpenter sounds a bit agitated about discussing The Thing reboot, he’s been doing it for a while now. In 2020, Carpenter indicated that he might get involved with The Thing reboot, which then opened the floodgates of press inquiries. ComicBook spoke to Carpenter earlier this year, and he similarly had nothing to offer on what’s happening with The Thing, stating, “There are updates that I am not allowed to speak of. We’ll see, we shall see. Never say never in the movie business, never say never.”

The Thing reboot was announced almost two years ago, and has obviously had the massive challenge of trying to get production going in the midst of the pandemic. The few details we know are that it will go back to the source novella “Who Goes There?” by John W. Campbell, which inspired both Carpenter’s The Thing, which was itself a remake of the 1951 film The Thing from Another World. In recent years more of Campbell’s work has surfaced, and the “Who Goes There?” novella was updated into a full-length novel called Frozen Hell. That now-completed work will be the inspiration for this new version of The Thing movie. 

A direct prequel to Carpenter’s The Thing was released in 2011, but it crashed and burned at the box office ($31.5 million on a $38 million budget). However, The Thing 2011 has still retained something of a cult status alongside the 1982 film. It will be interesting to see how this new reboot does.