Right now Amazon is currently running a digital movie rental deal for 2011’s The Thing for only $1.99.

This deal is valid through the end of today, Sunday, March 25, 2012, until 11:59pm PST. Once you activate the rental through Amazon’s Instant Video on demand service, you’ll have access to the movie for 48 hours. If you’re interested in purchasing the digital version, the cost is $14.99.

Also, if you’d like to own a physical copy of The Thing, the Blu-ray/DVD Combo Pack is available for $19.99 while the DVD is $14.69.

Universal Studios has released the first official official trailer for The Thing, the prequel to the 1982 John Carpenter scifi-horror film of the same name.

Watch the trailer here below and check out the official synopsis for the film.

The studio recently released the teaser poster and the new trailer appears to be the mostly the same footage that was shown at the film’s panel at New York Comic-Con in October 2010 (minus the opening cafe scene that was shown).

The film, which hits theaters on October 14, 2011, stars Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Joel Edgerton, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, Ulrich Thomsen, Eric Christian Olsen, and Trond Espen Seim.

The cast and filmmakers of Universal’s The Thing made an appearance at the 2010 New York Comic-Con on Saturday to promote their upcoming prequel to John Carpenter’s 1982 film, and revealed the first footage from the new film (see footage description here below).

Director Matthijs van Heijningen said that in the film we will get to see The Thing creature in its “pure form” — the form in which it’s been trapped in the ice in for all these years, but he also hinted that since the very nature of The Thing is stealing the biological identity of other lifeforms and it being from another planet, how could we know what this entity’s pure form really is.

Heijningen talked about a bit the effects used in the film, stating that they used as many practical effects (as opposed to CGI) as possible. He said he feels that playing against a man in a suit is much better for the actors than looking at a tennis ball on a string against a green screen. “We had as many real monsters on the set as possible,” the director said.