It's hard not to think about The Thing and John Carpenter facing the announcement of the science fiction film White Marswith Lucy Hale and a big monster.
On Judgment Day, humanity will have to answer for its actions for the failures of many great films, shunned upon their theatrical release before being considered cult. The Thing will necessarily be part of the list, in the same way as Blade Runner, Brazil, Scott Pilgrimand many others.
Released in 1982, this adaptation of the book The Thing by John W. Campbell tanked at the box office, with not even 20 million dollars for a budget of 15 million. Stuck on his way out between the horrific ghosts of Poltergeist (121 million at the box office) and the friendly alien ET The Extra-Terrestrial (nearly 620 million at the time), The Thing subsequently became an absolute reference, and one of the greatest films of the great John Carpenter.
Direct consequence of this reputation: the film has been copied profuselyfrom the episode of X-Files Arctic Project to the barely hidden prequel-remake The Thing released in 2011, by way of Leviathan and the short film Zygote by Neill Blomkamp. And it's not likely to stop with the announcement of the project White Marsa SF story that looks a little, a lot, really like The Thing.
THE THING + ALIEN
Deadline exclusively announces the arrival of this White Mars, compared from the first line to Alien et The Thing. And for good reason: the film takes place in an isolated research station in Antarctica, and will follow a microbiologist who confronts a malicious entity whose goal is to kill everyonestarting with the team on site. And she’s the one who’s apparently going to save the world.
Lucy Hale will play this umpteenth copy of Ellen Ripleycalled Sammie. This is not the first time that she will set foot in so-called genre cinema, and that is precisely what is scary since her CV includes some marvels like Truth or Dare (2018) et Nightmare Island (2020), both directed by Jeff Wadlow. Revealed in the series Pretty Little Liarsit also appeared at the beginning of Scream 4 (2011).
ONE MARCH AND THEY START AGAIN
Another reason not to get carried away White Mars : the filming conditions. Deadline specifies that the film will be shot in November in the famous Italian Cinecittà studios, entirely in a virtual environment. In other words, with LED wall technology, popularized with StageCraft (in a studio called “The Volume”) and The Mandalorianwhere the actors as well as certain real elements are filmed in front of huge dynamic screens showing the settings.
Of course, many films have made skillful, intelligent and therefore invisible use of it, as in certain scenes of The Batman, The Fabelmans or even Westworld. But there is also many examples of frozen and sad stagings to tearsas in Ant-Man 3.
To understand everything about this new technology, Antoine's video:
White Mars is the first feature film from Singularity Entertainment, which specializes in “virtual productions”. Matt Williams, one of the producers, said:
“I am happy that this is the first of multiple films with the teams of XYZ and Singularity. Together, we will bring technologically advanced directing tools to the independent cinema market, to visually compete with big studio films. »
Écrit Matt Mitchell, Vicki Sargent et Roo Berry, White Mars will be directed by Martin Owen. It is currently in the process of completing Above the Belowa science fiction film that he co-directed with Idris Elba, who also played one of the leading roles. We are afraid, but obviously we will throw ourselves at it, as good fans of big, ugly monsters.
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