The Thing remake gets two cast members

Mary Elizabeth Winstead and Joel Edgerton are set to star in The Thing re-imagining, according to HeatVisionBlog.

The 1982 John Carpenter-directed Kurt Russell cult movie, and the 1951 Howard Hawks film The Thing From Another World, both take inspiration from a 1938 short story, Who Goes There? published in the pulp magazine Astounding. Matthijs Van Heijningen is directing the new film, which was written by Ronald D. Moore and Eric Heisserer. Strike Entertainment – the company that brought Dawn of the Dead back to the big screen – is producing the picture, which again centers on a shape-shifting alien that terrorizes a group of people holed up in a remote research facility.

Winstead will play a Ph.D. candidate who joins a Norwegian research team in Antarctica after it discovers an alien ship in the ice. After a trapped organism starts a series of attacks, she’s forced to join a blue-collar mercenary helicopter pilot’s (Edgerton) attempts to stop the rampage.

Production is expected to ramp up this March in Toronto.

Winstead previously played Bruce Willis’ daughter in Live Free or Die Hard, and is about to play Ramona V. Flowers in the comic adaptation Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, which Universal is releasing on August 13th.

Joel Edgerton next co-stars in Gavin O’Connor’s Warrior, which will be distributed by Lionsgate.