Nightdive Studios has dropped a major tease for their next remastering project.
On Twitter, the studio posted an image and asked fans to guess what this game could possibly be. And as many fans pointed out, even with the color tinting, the project they were teasing is unmistakable: the 2002 video game adaptation of John Carpenter’s The Thing.
The original John Carpenter’s The Thing was a 1982 science fiction horror film, starring Kurt Russell, Keith David, and Wilford Brimley. The film was inspired by the 1951 film called The Thing From Another World, but was produced as a more faithful adaptation of the 1938 novella Who Goes There?
While John Carpenter’s The Thing was a famously reviled flop upon theatrical release, its reputation would come back up when it came to home video and TV. It came across as mean spirited in comparison to the more successful E.T. The Extra Terrestrial, but taken in its own merits, fans recognized the craftsmanship in its nihilistic narrative.
The 2002 video game simply called The Thing, released on Windows, Xbox, and PlayStation 2. It was developed by Computer Artworks, a British tech company that pivoted into making video games in the 2000s. Unfortunately, Computer Artworks was not able to make their own sequel to this game, as they ran out of money and went into receivership only a year after its release.
The game is set shortly after the 1982 film, with a US Special Forces team being sent to the Antarctic outpost to find out what happened there. As you can imagine, they run into the creature, which clearly survived the events of the film after all.
But the game, unlike the other film sequels, really sees this premise and takes it to a new direction. We won’t spoil what happens here, but it’s what Blumhouse should be looking into as they make their proposed remake for sure.
The Thing was a commercial and critical success, standing alongside Peter Jackson’s King Kong as one of the best video game adaptations of a movie ever made. There is no question that the game was worthy of a remake, but Nightdive must have an incredible story on how they got things to come together to make this happen.
It’s certainly not the first game that Nightdive has rescued from literally the developer going out of business, but as a licensed game, it does seem like one of those impossible projects that they managed to pull off. Clearly, Atari SA (Infogrames) was right to invest full scale in them after all.
