The Director And Producer Of TRON LEGACY Plunge Into THE BLACK HOLE!!

Merrick here...
TRON LEGACY director Joseph Kosinski and Sean Bailey (a producer on that film) are teaming with screenwriter Travis Beacham to "reinvent" THE BLACK HOLE. Enormous in scale and filled with challenging thematics, Gary Nelson's 1979 original was a brooding, heavily-atmospheric piece that was released shortly after the far sleeker STAR TREK: THE MOTION PICTURE (which more or less swallowed it). Signifying the beginning of Disney's migration towards more "mature" fare, THE BLACK HOLE was the studio's first PG rated film. It was remarkably dark in tone for its time - and even for today. Too oppressive for kids but sometimes too goofy fort adults, The Powers That Be must've had a big ol' set of steel balls to let this one out - hopefully Disney will be as courageous with the new project. Despite its dodgy science and inconsistent pacing, the THE BLACK HOLE is warmly remembered by Geeks like me who fell in love with the film's imposing design, unapologetic (if not always fully realized) spectacle, its unsettling "vibe", an assorted rabble of robots, its memorable John Barry score, and one of the most iconic spaceships of all time: I love how space looked in this movie - it was still, clearly, space - but its ambience was bright enough to silhouette ships and whatnot. A very distinctive look we hadn't seen before, and haven't seen since.

The details of the update are being kept secret, though the take does involve grounding the story in the science of a black hole, much more so than in the original. Maximilian also would return.

...says THR HERE. As a kid, I vividly remember seeing THE BLACK HOLE more times than STAR TREK: THE MOTION PICTURE. Was it as "good" a film? I don't know...probably not...it would be interesting to see them back-to-back (Blu-Ray, Disney? ) from today's perspective. TBH certainly took chances - far more so than ST: TMP. While THE BLACK HOLE shared ST: TMP's propensity for, shall we say, narrative deceleration - it skewed more towards adventurous storytelling than its TREK counterpart on the whole. It'll be interesting to see how the concept will be "reinvented" in light of Abrams' recent TREK movie. Might the return of space-based shoot-em-ups be nigh? If memory serves, Disney shunted THE BLACK HOLE's home video rights over to Anchor Bay at one point. The studio later reconsidered this bewildering move, and recovered the rights back for a signifiant amount of money (so says word on the street). Disney's subsequent re-issue of the film can be found HERE, and Alan Dean Foster's novelization of the movie can be found HERE. There's even a BLACK HOLE lunch box still available on eBay. Maybe I'll grab that...
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