THE THING Is Briefly Returning to Theaters for 40th Anniversary

Picture this: You’re on a research expedition in Antarctica. It’s a little spooky already, given the remote, icy location. But it gets a whole lot worse when a mysterious monster, who can imitate and replicate its victims, starts taking down the team—one by one. Whew, I get chills thinking about it—and not because of the Antarctic cold. The Thing turns 40 this year. While it’s taken some time, the film is now a beloved piece of cult cinema. To celebrate the giant milestone, The Thing is returning to theaters.

Kurt Russell as MacReady in The Thing
Universal Pictures

Fathom Events is bringing the John Carpenter classic back to the big screen—but for just two days only. (We first saw this news at Collider.) Participating theaters throughout the US will screen The Thing on Sunday, June 19, and Wednesday, June 22. To find a screening close by, visit The Thing‘s page on the Fathom Events site and simply type in your zip code or city.

This is an exciting opportunity to see John Carpenter and one of his go-to actors from the late ’70s to mid-’90s, Kurt Russell, in one of their best team-ups—and on a giant screen, no less. And that’s not even factoring in those horrifyingly brilliant visuals and Ennio Morricone’s eerie score. Given The Things‘s less than stellar original box office run, it’s a nice little encore so many decades later.

The Bennings monster screams in John Carpenter's The Thing.
Universal Pictures

The Thing wasn’t exactly a huge box office success during its 1982 debut. But let’s face it, that was a wild movie summer, with movies like Annie, Rocky III, Conan the Barbarian, and Fast Times at Ridgemont High, all hitting the big screen within a very short window. To make matters worse, The Thing—and Blade Runner—dropped something like two weeks after E.T. the Extraterrestrial, the highest-grossing film of ’82. You just can’t compete with that.

Book your tickets to see MacReady in action—and Kurt Russell looking very hot while being very cold—with The Thing‘s 40th Anniversary screenings in June.