You may not know who Mary Elizabeth Winstead and Joel Edgerton are right now, but here's the thing... they're starring in The Thing (sorry, I couldn't help myself). THR is reporting that the duo has been chosen to start in the latest take on the 1938 short story about Antarctic researchers terrorized by a being from another planet. You probably know the story best as the 1982 John Carpenter movie.

In the new film Winstead will play a Ph.D. candidate who joins the Norwegian research team in Antarctica, with Edgerton as a "blue-collar mercenary helicopter pilot" who teams up with Winstead to defeat the evil creature. Winstead will likely be good and famous by the time The Thing comes out, as she's the female lead of this August's Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, and that movie will be a hit if there's any justice in this world. Edgerton, for his part, just starred opposite Cate Blanchett in A Streetcar Named Desire, and was also part of the stellar acting ensemble in the Australian crime drama Animal Kingdom, which premiered at Sundance and will presumably show up in theaters eventually.

Both Winstead and Edgerton are in the process of building careers, and it will be interesting to see how The Thing fits in with everything else they're doing. Careers have been made off of outstanding roles in horror movies... but they've been torpedoed by bad ones as well. Go forth carefully, you two.