The prequel to John Carpenter’s The Thing will not hit theatre screens this April. Universal had planned to release Matthijs van Heijningen Jr's prequel starring Joel Edgerson and Mary Elizabeth Winstead on April 29, 2011 but a studio spokeswoman told the Los Angeles Times that film was “not yet ready” and has now been left without a release date.
Now Universal have gone ahead and bumped Justin Lin's Fast Five, the latest installment of The Fast and the Furious franchise starring Dwayne Johnson, Vin Diesel and Paul Walker up into that slot, abandoning its original June 10, 2011 release, “citing the successful release of the franchise’s fourth film in April 2009.”
The Los Angeles Times state that Pierre Morel, who had been a front runner to direct the big-budget adaptation of the mysterious Hasbro board game, Ouija had a meeting to discuss his ideas for the project.
"But Morel and the executives couldn’t find common creative ground, according to two people familiar with the conversations who asked not to be identified because of the sensitive nature of the discussions. That leaves executives and producers to continue casting a net for directing candidates."
This poses a major problem because the film is scheduled to come out Thanksgiving 2012 and, along with Stretch Armstrong and some other Hasbro projects, if they don’t come out in a certain time frame, Universal will be forced to pay penalties. Plus, the release of all the films must tie in with Hasbro toys, which take longer to make and distribute than a movie.
