Hollywood heavyweighs help remake ANDROMEDA STRAIN and THE THING

By: Patrick Sauriol
Date: Tuesday, September 07, 2004
Source: Variety

Today's Variety reveals that some of Hollywood's A-level talent have come on to help create two new science fiction mini-series for The Sci Fi Channel.

First up is the involvement of director Ridley Scott (ALIEN, THELMA AND LOUISE, GLADIATOR) in a four-hour version of Michael Crichton's sci-fi thriller THE ANDROMEDA STRAIN. Originally made as a feature that was released back in 1971, the new STRAIN project will see Scott involved in a executive producer capacity. Robert Schenkkan is adapting Crichton's novel into a screenplay. Crichton's book told the story of mankind's first encounter with an alien form of life, an extraterrestrial microbe that turns out to be deadly to human life. The military assembles a group of civilian scientists to try to study and unravel the nature of the organism before it spreads over the Earth.

Meanwhile Frank Darabont, the director of THE GREEN MILE, THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION and THE MAJESTIC is producing a new version of THE THING, the third time that the story has been adapted for film. Writer David Johnson has been hired to adapt the original John W. Campbell Jr. short story that THE THING was based on (titled "Who Goes There?"). According to Darabont the project could be filming in the first part of the new year and be on the channel by late 2005 or spring of 2006. As with the new ANDROMEDA STRAIN, the new THING will be made as a four-hour mini-series.


Campbell's story and the two theatrical versions of THE THING are about a group of isolated men stationed at the South Pole that encounter an alien being that can mimic anyone. The 1951 version turned Campbell's creature into a Frankenstein-like monster made of plant matter that attacked the crew. In the John Carpenter remake released in 1982, the storyline was closer to the source material and the alien became a creature that could turn its flesh and blood into other shapes as well as infect and take over the bodies of other organisms.


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