While writing and shooting the prequel to John Carpenter's ice-cold horror story The Thing, director Matthijs van Heijningen Jr. had a chance to explore the original movie's backstory. Find out how and why the thing crashed on Earth in our exclusive interview.

While chatting with newbie director Matthijs van Heijningen Jr. about his prequel to The Thing, we managed to squeeze out a few details about his zombie horror project Army of the Dead. And the details were absolutely horrifying.

The best part about John Carpenter's The Thing was the excruciating paranoia. When you're fighting an alien that copies its prey perfectly, everyone is a potential threat. Thank goodness the new prequel to the 1982 classic has paranoia and slow burn tension in spades. Find out for yourself, with these four new clips!

If you remember the first few seconds of John Carpenter's original The Thing, a ship crash-landed from outer space burying itself under the snow in Antarctica. Behold that same space ship, revealed in this Russian poster for Matthijs van Heijningen Jr.'s prequel, also titled The Thing.

Last week Universal announced that the upcoming prequel to John Carpenter's The Thing would be delayed from April for re-shoots. The new release date is now October 14th 2011. A week before Paranormal Activity 3, perfect horror watchin' time. [DenOfGeek]

Matthijs van Heijningen Jr.'s prequel to John Carpenter's The Thing has gone from an April 29, 2011 release date to no release date at all. Universal claims the film's not ready. Sorry, alien head-spider fans.

The thought of Hollywood messing with John Carpenter's The Thing is enough to make our heads sprout spider-legs and run away. Which is why we brought our hardest-hitting questions to the set of the Thing prequel. Here's what we learned.