Joel Edgerton to star in 'The Thing'

Joel Edgerton

AAP

AUSSIE actor Joel Edgerton has been cast in the Hollywood remake of The Thing, about a shape-shifting alien who terrorises a group of people in Antarctica.

Edgerton will star alongside Mary Elizabeth Winstead (Death Proof) in the film by director Matthijs Van Heijningen, the Hollywood Reporter writes.

Winstead plays a PhD candidate who joins a Norwegian research team in Antarctica after it discovers an alien ship in the ice.

When a trapped organism is freed and begins a series of attacks, she is forced to team up with a blue-collar mercenary helicopter pilot, played by Edgerton, to stop the rampage.

The best-known version of the film was the 1982 production directed by John Carpenter and starring Kurt Russell, which was a remake of the 1951 flick The Thing From Another World, directed by Howard Hanks.

They are all inspired by a 1938 short story Who Goes There? published in pulp mag Astounding.

Filming is due to begin on The Thing on March 15 in Toronto.

Edgerton will next be seen in the Australian film Animal Kingdom, which just won an award at the Sundance Film Festival.