The iconic poster for the 1982 classic American sci-fi horror film The Thing was made in just 24 hours. The movie, directed by John Carpenter and written by Bill Lancaster, is based on the 1938 John W. Campbell Jr. novella Who Goes There?, and centers on a group of American researchers in Antarctica who encounter a parasitic “Thing” that goes on to imitate other organisms—including sled dogs—and wreak havoc on their base camp.
The famous poster for the movie was created by Drew Struzan, an American illustrator known for his more than 150 movie posters. Other movies he designed posters for include The Shawshank Redemption and Blade Runner, as well as the films in the Indiana Jones, Back to the Future, and Star Wars series. Struzan has since become an icon in the world of movie art.
Struzan also went on to create covers for various albums and books, and his numerous works of art have been displayed in galleries and published in printed collections. There was even a 2013 documentary based on his career; Drew: The Man Behind the Poster details his life and work and interviews the directors and other film personnel he worked with. Most recently, Struzan came out of retirement to create multiple posters for the 2019 release of How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World.
How The Thing's Iconic Poster Was Made (In Just 24 Hours)
When John Carpenter was getting ready to promote The Thing, a poster was needed in a hurry. As Struzan recently tweeted: “I conceived it, painted it, and my art was delivered to the studio all within 24 hours. In fact, when they put it under the glass to photograph it, the paint stuck to the glass because the thing was still wet!” Struzan hadn't even seen the movie when he drew the poster. As Struzan told Parade, he wasn't even given a rundown of the movie before crafting the image; the studio just told him to recall the 1950s movie, The Thing. They gave him no further detail, which only allowed him to consider the imagery in his head, working from there to create the image that has since become immediately recognizable inside and out of the genre. Now, it has a place standing amongst other iconic imagery like Carpenter's Halloween, Ridley Scott's Alien, and Jaws.
The image on The Thing poster depicts a man in a winter coat with beams bursting from his face; his head is encircled by a big hood. The man pictured is the protagonist MacReady, a helicopter pilot played by Kurt Russell. The poster—which Empire listed as the 43rd best film poster ever, the first being the Jaws poster—is reminiscent of the pre-credits sequence of the movie, which features dozens of strobing lights from an alien spaceship that is approaching Earth.