Ahhh! Umm.... ahhh.... Ahoy, squirts! Quint here... Okay... I want to start off in full control of my jerking knee... The logical part of my brain says I can't freak out about Universal remaking John Carpenter's brilliant THE THING because Carpenter's film itself was a remake of Howard Hawks' THE THING... There is a certain pedigree behind this remake, but one that I don't trust.

Ronald D. Moore is writing... he's producer and writer of the new BATTLESTAR GALACTICA, which everybody tells me is brilliant, but I haven't watched a single episode... I see he also wrote some CARNIVALE, which I loved and had his hand in STAR TREK: FIRST CONTACT, which is the best of the Next Generation TREKS... But he also had his hand in Mission: Impossible 2...

The producers are Marc Abraham and Eric Newman, who were behind the DAWN OF THE DEAD remake. That scares me a bit. As much as I respected the style and hardcore elements of the DAWN OF THE DEAD remake, the movie is a hollow-shell of the original and I don't want to see that happen here. With THE THING, the character work is so important. So, so, so important and that's the stuff that was glossed over in the DAWN remake...

David Foster, who produced the original, is onboard as well. Foster's a nice guy. I've talked with him at length about his work with Carpenter, but he also spear-headed the FOG remake that was so awful... So, much like the movie, I don't know who to trust...

I don't like this idea, but maybe we'll get a decent film out of it... one encouraging bit is a comment from the producers saying they want this film to be a "companion piece" to Carpenter's film, not a shot by shot remake... But I still am very wary of this. THE THING is one of those movies you don't fuck with, so hopefully these guys know what a fine line they're walking here...