Production History (The Thing) The Thing (1982)
The Thing was Universal Pictures' second attempt to film John W. Campbell's 1938 novella Who Goes There? — the first having been Christian Nyby and Howard Hawks's The Thing from Another World in 1951. The Carpenter version was greenlit in 1981 as part of a wave of high-budget studio horror that followed the success of Alien (1979), released into the same June 1982 corridor as E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial and Blade Runner, and reviewed at the time as the worst film of John Carpenter's career. (wikipedia)
The novella had been waiting for forty-three years
John W. Campbell, Jr.'s novella Who Goes There? was first published in Astounding Stories in August 1938 under the pen name Don A. Stuart. The Hawks/Nyby 1951 adaptation kept the Antarctic setting (relocated to the Arctic) and the embedded-research-station premise but discarded the novella's central engine — a shape-shifting organism that perfectly imitates its hosts — in favor of a single bipedal vegetable monster played by James Arness. Generations of science-fiction writers and directors had treated the unfilmed Campbell premise as the obvious major remake waiting to be made. (wikipedia)
Bill Lancaster wrote the screenplay across two studios and four years
Universal first hired screenwriter Bill Lancaster in 1976 to adapt Campbell's novella. Lancaster — son of Burt Lancaster, then known for his screenplay for The Bad News Bears (1976) — wrote multiple drafts before the project was paused; his final shooting draft, dated 1981, contained the camp's twelve-man cast, the dog-thing kennel scene,b12 the Norwegian camp recon,b6 b7 and the blood-test sequence.b32 b33 b34 The ending was rewritten after principal photography. See Bill Lancaster for Lancaster's career arc and the scripts he chose to write.
"I wanted the audience to be the thirteenth man at the table. The whole movie is built around this question: who do you trust when you can't trust anyone?" — Bill Lancaster, Cinefantastique (1982)
Carpenter inherited the project from Tobe Hooper
Universal had earlier developed The Thing with Tobe Hooper attached as director and Kim Henkel co-writing. The Hooper version was abandoned. Producer Stuart Cohen brought the project to John Carpenter in 1981, on the strength of Halloween (1978) and The Fog (1980); Escape from New York (1981) had not yet opened. Carpenter signed on with the agreement that the film would be a faithful adaptation of the novella rather than a remake of the Hawks/Nyby. See John Carpenter (The Thing).
Casting put the lead's name above the title
Kurt Russell — coming off his lead in Escape from New York (1981), his first adult collaboration with Carpenter after a decade of Disney comedies — was cast as MacReady. Carpenter has said the part was always Russell's. The supporting ensemble was assembled out of veteran character actors: Wilford Brimley (then 47, sometimes credited as A. Wilford Brimley), Donald Moffat, Richard Dysart, Charles Hallahan, and the relatively new Keith David, whose first major film this was. T.K. Carter was a stand-up comedian; David Clennon was an off-Broadway actor; Richard Masur was the most-credited supporting player on the call sheet. (imdb)
The shoot ran from August 1981 through January 1982
Principal photography began in August 1981 and ran through January 1982. Exterior helicopter and base-camp footage was shot at Stewart, British Columbia, Canada; an extensive Outpost 31 set was built on the Universal lot in Los Angeles, with the interior corridors refrigerated for breath effects and the kennel and rec-room sets built freestanding to allow for the practical creature work. Dean Cundey shot the film in 2.35:1 anamorphic Panavision. See Dean Cundey.
"We built that camp to fall apart. Every wall could come out. Every floor had a trapdoor under it. Rob Bottin needed to be able to put a creature anywhere." — John Carpenter, The Thing — DVD commentary (1998) (DVD commentary, partial transcript at Outpost 31)
Rob Bottin's effects nearly killed him
Rob Bottin, then twenty-two, supervised the practical creature effects. The dog-thing kennel scene, the Norris-chest defibrillator scene, the Blair-Thing climax, and the head-walk were all designed and built by Bottin's shop on the Universal lot. Bottin worked through illness for months on end and was hospitalized for exhaustion at the end of the shoot. Stan Winston was brought in uncredited to design the dog-kennel transformation specifically because Bottin's department was overrun. See Rob Bottin (The Thing) and Stan Winston's Uncredited Dog Work.
"I lived in that warehouse for a year. I was twenty-two and I had no business doing what I did, and at the end of it I was in the hospital." — Rob Bottin, Cinefex (1982)
Ennio Morricone's score was a Carpenter pastiche
Universal pushed Carpenter to hire a composer with broader prestige than Carpenter's own synthesizer scores. Ennio Morricone was hired, flew to Los Angeles, watched the rough cut, and delivered a score that consciously imitated Carpenter's own pulsing minimalist style. Morricone delivered multiple cues; Carpenter selected and edited the final track choices, and added several cues of his own. See Ennio Morricone (The Thing).
The ending was rewritten and reshot
Lancaster's original screenplay ended with MacReady alone at the burning camp, the dog from the opening pursuit running into frame. A test-screening response showed audiences disliked the dog-Thing button. Carpenter shot the alternative wind-down — Childs walking out of the storm, the bottle passed, the held two-shot — over a few days at the end of post-production. See The Two Endings for both endings and which has been canonical at which point in the film's history. See The Hawks-Nyby Original (1951) on the prior film adaptation Lancaster's screenplay deliberately re-routed.
Universal released the film into the worst possible weekend
The Thing opened on June 25, 1982. E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial had opened two weeks earlier, on June 11, and was the cultural event of the summer. Blade Runner opened the same day as The Thing. The audience that summer wanted optimism about contact with an alien intelligence; The Thing was, as a marketing tagline noted in some reviews, the worst possible counter-offer. Opening weekend was $3.1 million; the final domestic gross was $13.8 million on an $11–15 million budget; the film lost money. See The Box-Office Failure and Cult Restoration and 1982 — The Year of E.T. and The Thing.