Mandy Griffiths
Over on our weekly podcast, in which I host this week, I speak to director Matthijs van Heijningen Jr of “The Thing” which is hitting DVD and Blu-ray this week (interestingly enough, isn’t that keen on the film sharing the same title as John Carpenter’s original film but says they simply couldn’t come up with a better alternative).
Unlike your Justin Lin’s and Michael Bay’s, van Heijningen Jr is a man who doesn’t want to be tied down doing sequels. As such, he’s letting it be known that if a “Thing 3” – or whatever that inevitable second follow-up ends up being called – happens, he doesn’t want the job.
“I’m not sure whether they’re doing another Thing movie, to be honest. [If they do] I’m staying away from it. I just want to do something different.”
That something different mightn’t even be a horror film. If you’d asked him a few months back or so though, it would’ve been. For a while, van Heijningen Jr and Zack Snyder were developing a follow-up to the latter’s “Dawn of the Dead” (2004) for to direct. Unfortunately, the costs spiralled out of control and the zombie film is a no-go.
“I don’t know if that’s going to happen – it was really expensive, because it was going to have to shoot in Las Vegas”, van Heijningen Jr says of “Army of the Dead”, which would’ve seen a father heading into a zombie-infested Vegas to rescue his daughter.
The film, which is at Warner Bros, was written by Joby Harold and based on an original idea by Snyder.
Heijningen Jr says the studio deemed it too expensive a movie. “They didn’t really want us to shoot in Las Vegas – because of the expense of shooting in Las Vegas. I really don’t think it’s going to happen. ”
Another one bites the dust, eh?
