Just the other day Mike Bracken relayed to us that The Thing Prequel was set to film in March, but the details beyond who was directing (Matthijs Van Heijningen) and who was writing (Eric Heisserer based on ideas from Ronald D. Moore) were still a little fuzzy. Well now Bloody-Disgusting has gotten their hands on the official character descriptions for the major players and from it we can surmise perhaps the most telling bit of info about this project so far: Universal is going to try their darnedest to ignore the fact that the Norwegian base camp should be full of, well, Norwegians.

The descriptions BD got a hold of are full of serious spoilers, so I've culled the disappointing, but spoiler-free basics below.

Kate Lloyd - Main character. American paleontologist flown in to investigate the frozen spaceman.
Dr. Sander Halvorson - American microbiologist with a vague Norwegian accent (most likely).
Sam Carter - Roguish American helicopter pilot whose only concern is money (and probably creating sexual tension with Mrs. Lloyd).
Edvard Wolner - Norwegian geologist.
Adam Goodman - American friend of Kate's who also happens to be Dr. Halvorson's RA.
Derek Jameson - Carter's American co-pilot.
Jonas - The only distinctly Norwegian character.
Juliette - English-speaking Norwegian, she'll be the one translating everything for Kate.
Colin - Casting basically calls for anyone but a Scandinavian actor.

So let's see...for a film that is supposed to be what happened to the Norwegian base camp, a camp that was clearly established as having no relationship to the English language in Carpenter's film, out of 9 characters we have 5 that are, more or less, American. Gotta say, I'm pretty disappointed, Universal. It would be asking too much to cast a movie with all Scandinavian actors and subtitle the whole thing, but at least stay consistent with the film you're piggybacking off of.

[The above art is from Justin Reed, by the way.]