The Film: Familiar Carpenter themes - the supernatural, a siege mentality and more come into play with this red planet-set action thriller.

Natasha Henstridge is a cop in pursuit of Ice Cube's con Desolation Williams across the forbidding territory. And that's not her only problem: spirits of ancient Martians are pissed off that human colonists are disturbing their rest, so they take it out on us pesky homo sapiens.

As for right now, he's finishing up work on asylum horror The Ward and trying to get prison thriller Riot off the ground.

Carpenter Chats: "It started back at Miramax. Bob Weinstein asked me, 'Why don't you do a Mars movie kind of deal?' But he didn't say, 'Mars movie,' he said, 'Why don't you do an movie in outer space with the supernatural?'

"I wrote a treatment and he said, 'I don't like this; it's like your old films and like your other movies.' So I said, 'All right.'

"We raised some money in France and I needed a screenplay, so I called Larry Sulkis and said, 'Look, let's dash something out.' So I had a little treatment. That's kind of how it got started."

Remade? Zero interest so far.