Mary
Elizabeth
WinsteadSource

“The Thing,” released on October 14, acts as a prequel to the original mobie and centers around the discovery of an alien craft by scientists in an Antarctica research site. Winstead plays Kate Lloyd, a graduate student who ends up having a confrontation with Dr. Sander Halvorson, played by Ulrich Thompson, upon discovering the frozen corpse of a creature. Joel Edgerton plays Braxton Carter, a pilot.

Winstead, 26, described the key differences and similarities from the original 1982 film, and the new 2011 revamp.

“You know, I think we are very much a part of that same world and you know we are really trying to make an homage to this film, so it feels very similar,” Winstead told OnTheRedCarpet.com at the recent Los Angeles premiere.

“We have tons of animatronics, I mean on set every day we were dealing with amazing creature affects and working with incredibly talented people making our creatures,” Winstead added. “But of course in the modern age we do have technology to kind of take into a different place, so we did blend a lot of CGI worth it as well and that’s always a surprise as an actor to see on screen because you know, you don’t know on set what they’re going to do with it, so I thought they did a beautiful job kind of blending those two elements.”

The actress is herself a scary movie buff, citing “The Shining,” which stars Jack Nicholson, as her favorite. Horror movies, she noted, are becoming more popular among women.

“I have a lot of girlfriends who try to drag their boyfriends to horror films,” she added. So, I think it’s kind of interesting how it’s kind of taking on that new thing now, I think more girls are checking out horror films now.”

Check out this Cinemax double-take with Mary Elizabeth Winstead and Eric Christian Olsen while watching the autopsy scene from The Thing.

The weekend came and went and with that, The Thing finally debuted in theaters. Critics didn’t like it much, but who cares? The Thing debuted at #3, which I kind of was expecting it to land there given the other two films it was competing against. But anyway, here’s how much the top 3 films made over the three-day weekend.

1. Real Steel $16,304,000
2. Footloose (2011) $16,100,000
3. The Thing (2011) $8,700,000

As I’ve already said, the film is really good so whether you’re a fan of Carpenter’s version, see it. Hopefully it’ll do better next week. 😉