This should have horror-film fans squirming in uneasy anticipaton (on an aesthetic level, at least): Universal has greenlit a remake of John Carpenter's The Thing, which itself was a remake of (OK, vast improvement upon) 1951's The Thing From Another World. Both films concern a crew of scientists battling a murderous alien in the Antarctic, and Carpenter's version is rated among his best films. The Variety story notes that the remake is planned more as a "companion piece" than a "note-for-note remake," which is appropriate, considering Carpenter's version took the basic plot of the original, gutted everything else, and replaced the details with cool stuff.