Pinewood Toronto Studios will host the prequel to John Carpenter’s cult classic The Thing, which is set to shoot under director Matthijs van Heijningen Jr. for Universal Pictures. A spokesperson at Universal says the sci-fi horror will start shooting at the former Filmport in March, staying until June.

Penned by Battlestar Galactica writer and exec producer Ronald D. Moore and re-written by Eric Heisserer – the as-yet-unnamed project will follow events prior to the 1982 original, set in a Norwegian base in Antarctica where researchers encounter a shape-shifting alien from another world.

The prequel will mark the feature debut of van Heijningen, a Swedish filmmaker based in L.A. He is also attached to direct the developing zombie pic Army of the Dead for writer/producer Zack Snyder (300).

The US$15 million original used exteriors in B.C. and Alaska for the frozen landscape of the South Pole, and included a scene in the burned-out remains of the Norwegian base, after which the creature moved to a nearby American research station. It met chilly reviews and had a soft theatrical run, generating roughly $13 million at the box office, though it gained a cult following on home video. The Thing was itself a remake of the 1951 monster film The Thing from Another World.