It's more along the lines of movies that should've found, but inexplicably didn't, a large and welcoming audience when they came out, which is more or less what matters to the studios. This often has as much to do with marketing and bad timing as anything else. Or studio indifference. A lot of times it's, "Why did this movie, which is certainly fun and commercial and everything that theoretically should go over with a mass audience, flop while this movie, which sucks, was huge?"
And a good amount of the time it just isn't what the masses want to see at the time. The Thing would've tanked with or without E.T., it's just too bleak and graphic (not for me, of course, but for the fabled "four-quadrant audience"). The Thing has also gained popularity over the years on video, which I imagine is why someone at Universal thought a prequel might make sense. Which it didn't, box-office-wise. The masses weren't into it in '82 and they weren't into it last year either. In fact it tanked worse than the '82 version, which at least grossed a little more than it cost, unlike the prequel which was $22 million in the red. You won't be seeing another Thing movie any time soon, that's for sure.
