Aaron Ashmore has been cast in the indie feature "The Thaw," opposite Martha MacIsaac and Val Kilmer.

Anagram Pictures is producing the thriller about an Arctic research team attacked by a killer parasite released by melting polar ice caps.

Ashmore will play a college student in the besieged crew.

"The Thaw" is written by Michael Lewis and Mark A. Lewis. The latter also will direct. Anagram's Mary Anne Waterhouse, Trent Carlson and Rob Neilson will produce. Shawn Williamson and Stephen Hegyes from Brightlight Pictures and Blake Corbet from Anagram will serve as executive producers.

Shooting begins in Vancouver Monday.

Ashmore, repped by APA and Artistry Management, plays Jimmy Olsen on "Smallville," and previously had a regular spot on "Veronica Mars." He begins shooting a new season of "Smallville" in the late summer, and he will appear in the Lionsgate feature "Thomas Kinkade's Home for Christmas" at year's end.

Jay A. Fernandez // The Hollywood Reporter

Wow..That's Nice..

Already read about it on your website, sounds like an interesting project. Even though I don't really like Val Kilmer.

Just out of curiosity, didn't "The Thing" have a similar plot? Or was that an episode of X-Files...

Aaron's been pretty busy with movies lately!



Both actually. The episode, "Ice" (which I loved), was based on/their homage to "The Thing".

I know, right? I'm really ridiculously looking forward to "Home For Christmas", just because I want to see him and Jared Padalecki as brothers.

And yeah it does sounds pretty similar to "The Thing" but, I'm holding back judgement til I actually see it. It's being produced by the same team that did "Fido" and that movie is all kinds of brilliant.

Ah yes, thank you. I wasn't sure, I haven't seen both in quite a while.



I absolutely loved Fido! That's really good news.

I should perhaps clarify that I don't mind it at all when movies have a similar plot like an existing movie. Just look at "The Ruins" - the basic plot, especially in the beginning, wasn't such an exciting original idea and has been done many times before. The actual execution is what makes it brilliant.

"The Ruins" was such a better book then it was a movie. Not that it was a bad movie at all, I'm just still kind of ticked about them switched characters around. Eric was my favorite in the book and Shawn did a really good job as Eric but I really wish they hadn't have switched fates and things between Eric and Stacy, I think Shawn would have just been amazing had he been able to act out the scenes from the actual book.

It certainly wasn't a bad movie but I just can't make up my mind what to think about it. The character switching didn't actually bother me so much as I expected but I missed the psychological terror that was so prominent in the book. Which, of course, is not the movies fault.

But having read the book, the movie felt rather rushed to me and you don't learn as much about the individual characters as you do in the book. But that's unfair towards the movie, as it can't build up tension and characterize its protagonist in one and a half hour as the book does within several hundred pages. So I really don't know what to think of the movie.

P.S. Since I'm too lazy to create a new topic for it, here's a link to the interview Shawn did for Hypa Space during X3:
http://www.spacecast.com/videoplayer_2149.aspx