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Universal's much-debated prequel to John Carpenter's classic monster flick The Thing is set to start filming this March, and since that's right around the proverbial corner, it makes sense that the first bits of casting info for the film are starting to emerge.

THR's Heat Vision blog has the scoop on the first two actors who'll be getting stranded in Antarctica and one of them is troubling to me in a serious way.

According to the article, Joel Edgerton will be playing a "mercenary helicopter pilot" who teams up with Ph.D. candidate played by Mary Elizabeth Winstead to stop the shape-shifting alien organism after it's freed from a recently discovered UFO buried in the Antarctic ice.

Edgerton is best known for playing Uncle Owen (Luke's stepfather) in Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith. Winstead played Bruce Willis' daughter in Live Free or Die Hard.

The troubling thing here--if you get past the fact that Edgerton is basically a poor man's MacReady and proof that Hollywood didn't want to cast a foreign leading man--is the casting of Winstead. Carpenter's film featured no women and it was better for it. There was no sexual tension, no potential love interest, no contrived romances...it was just a group of men trying to survive and kill a monster they couldn't even begin to comprehend. That will almost certainly change in the prequel. Can The Thing still be a great movie with a woman as one of the leads? Of course. I'm just not convinced it will be because it's really easy to imagine how this story is going to play out.

What do you guys think? Are you happy with this casting or does this news make you think a prequel to The Thing is doomed to failure? Share your thoughts in the comment section.

Some call it The Gates of Hell. Others know it as City of the Living Dead. The Italians know it as Paura nella città dei morti viventi, which translated literally is Fear in the City of the Living Dead. My mom (and probably yours) knows it as "a disgusting zombie flick I've never heard of and will definitely never see."

It was one of those "badge of courage" horror flicks among my youthful friends and myself. Along with titles like I Spit On Your Grave, Bloodsucking Freaks, and Snuff, The Gates of Hell (as it was originally released here in the States) was one of the horror movies you had to make it all the way through if you wanted to hang with the big boys. And by big boys I mean brave 14-year-old horror nerds. Obviously.

Enough blather. Catalog polisher Blue Underground has just announced a City of the Living Dead Blu-ray, and I for one cannot wait to see what a woman vomiting high-definition intestines looks like on my television. To be released on May 25, the COTLD / TGOH blu-ray will provide three new featurettes, in addition to some previously-released marketing stuff and gory treats. Full details and cover art are available at DVDActive, which, by the way, is a fantastic resource for new DVD announcements. Just saying.

And yes, you're probably right: Zombie is most likely Fulci's finest fright flick. And then The Beyond. Or House By the Cemetery. This one just holds some nostalgia value for me. Plus it's really gross. Not even a particularly good movie, opinion be told, but lots of fun for the gorehounds.

Dang, someone at Lionsgate really delved into the vault for this one. Hell, I even saw this flick during its Philadelphia theatrical run in 1986 ... and then promptly forgot all about it. I vaguely remember there being a slick car. The film at hand is called The Wraith, and it's about an spirit(?) from another dimension who visits a small town to wreak vengeance on some murderous assheads. He does it in an ostensibly futuristic sports car, if memory serves.

Initially rated R but released as PG-13 after some trims, The Wraith does boast a pretty colorful cast: Charlie Sheen, Sherilyn Fenn, Nick Cassavetes, Randy Quaid, and (woo hoo!) Clint Howard are all involved somehow. Written and directed by Mike Marvin (whose filmography includes deliciousness like Hot Dog: The Movie and Hamburger: The Motion Picture, with a Six Pack to wash it down), The Wraith is nobody's idea of a cult classic -- and yet I'm very curious to give this flick a re-visit.

According to DVDActive, Lionsgate will unleash The Wraith on March 2, and the DVD (no blu-ray to speak of) will come with interviews, featurettes, and a Marvin commentary. Oh, and according to Dictionary.com, a wraith is "an apparition of a living person supposed to portend his or her death." I hope that's not a spoiler.

Since it's been delayed for a variety of reasons, we've been waiting to see Joe Johnston's rendition of The Wolfman for quite some time now. I'm always skeptical when someone tries to revisit the classic monsters, but I like Johnston's track record ... at least a lot more than I liked the Van Helsing director's track record. (For those who don't memorize these things, Joe Johnston also directed Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, The Rocketeer, October Sky, Hidalgo, Jurassic Park 3, and (ok, fine) Jumanji.)

We know that the new-fangled but old-fashioned remake will run 96 minutes and arrive bearing an R rating for "bloody horror violence and gore," but now comes word from BD.com that the "extended cut" (not "director's cut") will run almost twenty minutes longer. Johnston told BD: "I think it's 17 minutes longer – a lot of it's stuff up front, but there's also, throughout the film, we basically let the scenes play a little bit longer. There's a little bit of action stuff, but it's mostly bits of scenes that worked, but we cut them out to shorten the film. You know, to get down to our 96 minutes." (Click here for more.)

So there's just another reason to keep your fingers crossed on The Wolfman. If this new version (which stars Benicio Del Toro, Anthony Hopkins, Hugo Weaving, and Emily Blunt) is rock-solid, then hooray: We get 17 minutes more of it in a few months.

Jaume Balagueró is perhaps best known for his popular cinema verite thrillers [REC] and [REC]2 (review), which was co-written and c-directed with Paco Plaza, and have since become tremendous hits among horror fans. While speculation concerning the potential for a [REC]3 continues, Shock Till You Drop has reported that Jaume Balaguero's solo directorial effort Flatmate has entered the pre-production stages and has announced its first cast member, Spanish actor Luis Tosar.

Tosar is most widely known for his role as the primary antagonist Montoya in Michael Mann's Miami Vice, though he sports an impressive list of roles from Spain, including last year's Cellda 211, for which he received a best actor nomination at the 2010 Goya Awards, which will be held on February 14th.

In addition to this little tidbit of info, Shock also brings to us an updated synopsis, expanding on the one they reported a few months back.

Our Horror Squad pal Mike Bracken tweeted yesterday that Lionsgate has announced April 27 as the DVD release date for the long-awaited The Descent Part 2. What, you actually expected LG to release this one in theaters? After the "releases" they put together for Midnight Meat Train, Horsemen, Blood Creek, and Train? Not bloodily likely. Unless it's a Saw sequel or a festival pick-up (like Buried), our old friend Lionsgate seems to have forsaken the horror genre. (And if you're holding out some hope for Cabin Fever 2, don't. It's abysmal.)

Or maybe The Descent Part 2 just sucks eggs? The flick was released theatrically in France last October, and in the UK in December. The Independent gives the flick 2 out of 5 stars, but our pals at the genre blogs seem a little more enthusiastic: Dread Central gives it three knives out of five, Brutal as Hell goes 4 out of 5, and Quiet Earth goes all the way up to 8.5 out of 10.

All I know is that I adore the original as much as Peter Hall hates it, and if the follow-up is at least half-decent and entertaining (kinda like Halloween 2 and Jaws 2) then I'll be a happy guy. Oh, but the DVD cover is kind of a mess. I've included a piece up top, but check out DVDActive for the full pic.

I was not a fan of Hatchet, Adam Green's debut horror film. While being touted as a return to old-school American horror, it managed to do nothing to distinguish itself from other contemporary slasher flicks. The characters were contrived, the plot cliche and the gore unimpressive. My experience with Green's first horror film notwithstanding, I was excited for his next horror film, the "stuck on a ski lift" thriller Frozen. My interest in the film grew as many lauded the film's ability to invoke levels of tension unheard of in contemporary horror, and while I still had the dreadful Hatchet burned in the back of my head, I kept an open mind and went in expecting a solid thriller. Sadly, the hype got the best of me, and Frozen proved to be obscenely mediocre.

Frozen is ostensibly Open Water on a ski lift. Dan and Lynch are childhood buddies who spend every weekend hitting the slopes. Much to the chagrin of Lynch, Dan has been bringing along his girlfriend Parker, whose inability to snowboard and overall intrusion on their friendship has started to become more and more apparent. With lift tickets being a bit too expensive, offering the lift operator a hundred bucks for a day of skiing and snowboarding seems like the ideal situation. After spending the day watching Parker fall on her ass, our unfortunate trio attempts one more run before the mountain is closed due to inclement weather. The lift operator reluctantly lets them go up for one more run, and due to a series of unfortunate misunderstandings the ski lift gets shut down, the mountain closes, and our three protagonists are forced to fight off freezing temperatures and hungry wolves in an effort to survive.

Did you see Legion, the dreadful biblical action movie that was hardly biblical and barely an action movie? Don't feel bad, no one else did, either. Word of mouth seems to have effectively (and rightfully) killed Screen Gems' baby with a second weekend drop off at the box office that guarantees it can never be called a hit. But studios have lukewarm flicks all the time, right, no big deal?

Well, apparently it was a pretty big deal at the Sony owned genre arm. In what cannot be a coincidence, four days after Legion's 60% drop at the box office Screen Gems have announced the following release date shuffles:

- The Roommate: Sept. 17, 2010 to Feb. 4, 2011
- Priest: Aug 10, 2010 to Jan. 14, 2011
- Underworld 4: Jan 21, 2011 to Sept. 23, 2011

In addition to the date changes, it is looking like original Underworld helmer Len Wiseman and star Kate Beckinsale will be returning for part 4, though the rumor that it was going to arrive in 3D appears to have dried up. However, it does look like Priest, directed by Legion's Scott Stewart, will now be Priest 3D.

Back around Halloween, Bloody-Disgusting posted a lengthy interview with screenwriter Peter Briggs. The focus of the piece was on his very cool sounding period monster flick Mortis Rex, but buried deep in the article was an interesting tidbit on another project: a World War II horror film entitled Panzer 88.

News emerged yesterday (again, from the guys over at B-D) that the project is moving along the production track and that Briggs will be handling the directorial duties with Gary Kurtz producing.

The basic story outline breaks down as follows: "Panzer is another supernatural thriller: basically a character piece set in a German King Tiger tank in Russia in World War 2. It's five guys in a tin can, and something's trying to stop them making it home. It's creepy, and smart."

I love me some World War II horror, so Panzer 88 definitely intrigues me. I am curious about how they're going to pull off making the German characters sympathetic protagonists. It can be done--Das Boot is a good example--but it always makes me feel weird to root for the Germans...

Don't expect to be sitting down to watch Panzer 88 in the immediate future. Briggs is working on Mortis Rex, which is currently in pre-production, and it seems very unlikely that this film will move forward before that one is completed.