The iconic movie John Carpenter didn’t want to direct: “It was not something I wanted to do”
John Carpenter has always had a complicated relationship with Hollywood. Over the years, he consistently tangled with studio executives and saw his films released to critical derision, only to be reevaluated later as the defining classics they always were. Naturally, this means he has mixed emotions over some of his most beloved films, including an iconic one he directed in the early 1980s that is now viewed as arguably his greatest picture. At the time, though, Carpenter didn’t even want to make the movie, let alone revolutionise a genre with it.
Carpenter first heard rumblings about this film in 1976, the same year he broke out in the world of independent movies with Assault on Precinct 13. He was contacted by his old University of Southern California buddy Stuart Cohen, a producer working with Universal Pictures on a new adaptation of the 1938 novella Who Goes There? by John W Campbell. That terrifying sci-fi horror story had already been turned into a movie in 1951 when Howard Hawks made The Thing From Another World – which happened to be one of the films that made Carpenter want to make cinema.
To Cohen’s surprise, though, Carpenter took a lot of convincing to agree to attach himself to the project. “It was not something I wanted to do,” Carpenter admitted to SyFy Wire in 2024. “Universal had The Thing and they wanted to remake it. The original Thing was one of my favourite movies. I really didn’t want to get near it.”
Perhaps Carpenter felt too close to the material or too much of a fan to want to risk messing up something he loved. Either way, Cohen had to talk him into it, and he did it by suggesting Carpenter read the novella again, which he hadn’t done in many years. “I re-read the novella and thought, ‘You know, this is a pretty good story here,'” Carpenter said by way of vast understatement. “We get the right writer, the right situation, we could do something.”
Indeed, reading the novella again proved to Carpenter that there was scope to do something radically different with a remake of The Thing From Another World. Hawks’ movie, while a classic of that era, wasn’t overly faithful to Campbell’s tale. It changed the alien from a shapeshifting entity capable of mimicking the body and characteristics of anything it encountered to a humanoid alien with a cellular structure akin to vegetation. Carpenter and Cohen saw great potential in the idea that the Thing could be anyone, as that would bring incredible paranoia to the film.
So, finally convinced, Carpenter agreed to make The Thing, but Universal got cold feet about him. At that time, he had yet to make 1978’s Halloween and was viewed as a lowly indie director with no track record. To Carpenter’s chagrin, the studio hired The Texas Chain Saw Massacre’s Tobe Hooper to make the movie instead. However, it wound up unhappy with Hooper and Kim Henkel’s script concept, so they were fired. Other writers were brought on board to pitch, and the studio attempted to hire John Landis as director – before it finally ended up back where it started.
In truth, Universal’s return to Carpenter wasn’t only prompted by its failure to land another director or by the huge success of Halloween. Instead, the studio saw the world go nuts for Ridley Scott’s Alien in 1979 and knew it had to strike while the iron was hot – so the project was finally offered to Carpenter. Naturally, he gave everyone a bit of a hard time about it.
“You guys have failed three times,” Cohen claims Carpenter told the studio. “Why do I want to sign onto a failed project?”
Ultimately, Carpenter did agree to make The Thing – but only after he finished work on 1981’s Escape From New York. “I had my first studio movie, which was a big deal,” he mused. Little did he know about the trials and tribulations he would have in store over the next few years, though. These would include production difficulties, vitriolic reviews, a flame-out at the box office, and finally, cult classic status – but that’s a story for another day.
