John Carpenter Says They’re “Working On” The Thing Sequel
For more than four decades, John Carpenter has left us sitting in the freezing ruins of Outpost 31 with R.J. MacReady and Childs, wondering whether either man is actually still human. Now Carpenter has once again suggested that the story of The Thing might not be finished after all.
Appearing at Fan Expo Chicago this weekend, Carpenter was inevitably asked whether a sequel to his 1982 science fiction horror masterpiece could ever happen. His response was remarkably straightforward: “We’re working on it now.” When pushed for anything more concrete, however, Carpenter immediately reverted to the wonderfully unhelpful John Carpenter we know and love: “Yeah, I don’t know. We’ll see.”
So before anyone starts booking their flights back to Antarctica, there is an important distinction to make. Universal has not officially announced The Thing 2, there is currently no confirmed director, cast, production date or release date, and Carpenter hasn’t revealed exactly what “working on it” means. But this isn’t the first time he has suggested that something is moving behind the scenes, which makes his latest comments considerably more interesting than the usual convention speculation.
Carpenter Keeps Teasing The Thing 2
Carpenter made an almost identical comment during a Fan Expo appearance in 2025, when he also said, “We’re working on it now.” Before that, he had already spent several years giving tantalisingly vague answers whenever the possibility of returning to The Thing came up. In 2023, Carpenter said that he had been “sworn to secrecy” and suggested there “may be a Thing 2.”
Perhaps most intriguing of all is Carpenter’s attitude towards the ending of the original film. The Thing concludes with MacReady, played by Kurt Russell, and Childs, played by Keith David, sitting opposite one another while the remains of the Antarctic station burn around them. Neither knows whether the other is still human, rescue is far from guaranteed and Carpenter simply leaves them there.
It remains one of the greatest ambiguous endings in horror history precisely because it refuses to give us an answer. Theories about Childs, MacReady, their breath, their eyes, the bottle MacReady hands over and practically every other visible object in the scene have circulated for decades. Carpenter has previously indicated that, in his view, both characters survived the immediate events of the film. Whether that has any relevance to whatever is currently being discussed remains completely unknown.
It does, however, leave one hell of a door open.
The Thing Wasn’t Always Considered a Masterpiece
It is difficult to imagine now, but The Thing wasn’t greeted as an instant classic when Universal released it in June 1982. In fact, the reaction was brutal.
Carpenter’s film arrived only two weeks after Steven Spielberg’s E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial had given cinemagoers a considerably friendlier vision of visitors from another world. The Thing offered the exact opposite: an alien organism that could absorb you, imitate you perfectly and then sit quietly beside your friends while everyone wondered who was going to sprout tentacles next. The film struggled commercially and was savaged by a number of prominent critics, with its extraordinary creature effects and relentlessly bleak tone frequently singled out for criticism.
Time has been considerably kinder.
Carpenter’s adaptation of John W. Campbell Jr.’s novella Who Goes There? follows the inhabitants of an isolated American research station in Antarctica after they unwittingly encounter an extraterrestrial organism capable of assimilating and perfectly imitating other lifeforms. What initially appears to be a monster movie rapidly becomes something much nastier: a film about trust collapsing between people who have absolutely no way of knowing who is still human.
Kurt Russell’s MacReady anchors an outstanding ensemble that also includes Keith David, Wilford Brimley, Donald Moffat, Richard Dysart, T.K. Carter, David Clennon, Richard Masur and Charles Hallahan. Carpenter gradually tightens the screws until the men aren’t simply fighting the creature; they’re fighting their own inability to trust one another.
And then there are Rob Bottin’s effects.
Four decades later, The Thing remains one of the great showcases for practical creature effects. Bodies split, stretch, mutate and recombine into forms that feel genuinely alien because there seems to be no fixed design for the creature. The Thing isn’t a monster in the traditional sense. It is whatever it has consumed, and when its disguise fails, the results can be spectacularly revolting. Bottin was responsible for the majority of the creature work, while Stan Winston and his team handled the memorable dog creature sequence.
The film’s reputation grew enormously through television, cable and particularly home video. Today, the critical consensus is almost unrecognisable compared with 1982, with The Thing routinely regarded as one of Carpenter’s finest films and one of the greatest science fiction horror movies ever made.
And Then Came The Thing… Again
There has already been another theatrical visit to this particular frozen nightmare, although Universal made the slightly confusing decision to call that film The Thing as well.
Released in the United States on October 14, 2011, Matthijs van Heijningen Jr.’s The Thing was not a remake, despite its title and marketing leading plenty of people to assume otherwise. It was actually a direct prequel designed to lead straight into Carpenter’s movie. So yes, it really was almost 15 years ago. Anyone who remembers seeing it at the cinema and doesn’t appreciate being reminded of that fact can join the rest of us in quietly staring into the middle distance for a moment.
The film stars Mary Elizabeth Winstead as palaeontologist Kate Lloyd, who travels to a Norwegian Antarctic research station after the team discovers an extraterrestrial spacecraft buried beneath the ice. Alongside Joel Edgerton, Ulrich Thomsen, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, Eric Christian Olsen and a predominantly Norwegian supporting cast, Kate soon discovers that the apparently dead organism recovered from the ice is very much alive.
The clever idea behind the prequel was that Carpenter had already shown us its aftermath.
When MacReady and Copper visit the destroyed Norwegian camp in the 1982 film, they find the results of a nightmare we never actually witnessed: burned bodies, abandoned rooms, an enormous block of ice and that unforgettable grotesque two-faced corpse. The 2011 film essentially works backwards from those clues, showing how the Norwegian station was destroyed and ultimately connecting its finale directly to the opening of Carpenter’s movie.
The prequel didn’t enjoy anything approaching the reputation of its predecessor. It grossed around $31.5 million worldwide against a reported $38 million production budget and received mixed reviews. One particularly contentious element was its creature effects. Practical effects were created during production, but much of that work was ultimately replaced or augmented digitally during post-production, something that has remained a source of frustration among fans who wanted the film to visually complement Bottin’s work in the original.
There are nevertheless things to admire about the film, particularly Winstead’s performance and the sheer ambition involved in attempting to construct a story that slots immediately before one of horror’s most obsessively analysed movies.
So What Could The Thing 2 Actually Be?
That is currently the enormous unanswered question.
The Thing has continued beyond the films before. Most notably, Computer Artworks’ 2002 video game presented itself as a sequel to Carpenter’s film, beginning after the destruction of Outpost 31. But another feature film would be an entirely different proposition, particularly if Carpenter’s comments about MacReady and Childs have any bearing on the story.
Kurt Russell is now 75 and Keith David is 70, so a sequel involving the original characters would obviously need to account for the decades that have passed. Alternatively, a new film could follow another outbreak entirely, use Carpenter’s movie as established history, or take the mythology in a direction nobody is currently expecting.
For now, though, none of that has been announced, and it would be misleading to pretend otherwise.
What we actually know is much simpler and considerably more tantalising: John Carpenter has once again been asked about another Thing movie, and instead of dismissing the possibility, he says they’re working on it.
Considering Carpenter has been teasing the possibility for several years, something is clearly keeping the subject alive. Whether that eventually becomes a screenplay, a Universal production, a direct sequel involving MacReady and Childs, or simply another project that disappears into development hell remains to be seen.
But after 44 years of wondering exactly what happened after that fire went out, we’ll happily keep watching the horizon.
