The Thing Director Reveals The Sequel Plans Fans Never Got To See

Some of the best science fiction stories work by having their protagonists question everything around them. This is definitely the case with John Carpenter's "The Thing," a film that follows a group of scientists trapped in the Antarctic with an alien who can imitate anyone who falls into its grasp. While Carpenter's film is a stone-cold '80s horror classic, that didn't stop Universal Pictures from making a "The Thing" prequel that explains how the creature was unearthed and how it ended up at the research station in the first place.

Matthijs van Heijningen Jr.'s prequel film may have been divisive, but the filmmaker also imagined a sequel to his 2011 film that would follow its only surviving character, Kate (Mary Elizabeth Winstead). "We fantasized about a sequel," the director told Syfy Wire. "Kate would escape and would be picked up at sea and tries to warn the world at an oil platform near the South Pole. The monster would break loose on the rig. I liked the oil rig mayhem idea."

Though the idea of the alien organism from "The Thing" wreaking havoc on an oil rig is admittedly a pretty cool one, especially considering how much flammable liquid would be around, fans may not be willing to give the filmmaker a second chance after the 2011 prequel.

The film holds a meager score of 34% from critics on Rotten Tomatoes, and its audience score of 42% isn't much better. As a result, many criticized "The Thing" for being derivative of John Carpenter's film, which was itself a remake of "The Thing from Another World," and pointed out how beholden it was to its superior predecessor.

Matthijs van Heijningen Jr. says he now understands why fans failed to cotton to his take on the iconic science fiction horror film. "The Carpenter version was so good, and a lot of fans were almost offended by the prequel and didn't see the necessity for a follow-up," he said to Syfy Wire. "But now I fully understand that it was a bit early."

All the same, if there ever was going to be a proper sequel to "The Thing," an oil rig would be a great place to set it. For his part, though, John Carpenter was mum on his ideas for a potential sequel when he spoke to Fandom. "I just think there's another bit of a story to tell there, which I'm not going to tell you about," he said cryptically. Even if Carpenter hasn't done much directing over the last couple of decades, if someone were to bring back "The Thing," the beloved genre filmmaker would probably be the only one whom audiences might trust to actually get it right.