The Black Hole: Disney's Attempted Space Epic In A Post-Star Wars World

By | December 17, 2020

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Maximilian in 'The Black Hole.' Source: IMDB

Disney's The Black Hole had good robots (V.I.N.CENT. and BO.B.), a big bad robot (Maximilian), an evil villain, laser battles, special effects, ambiguous creepy drone humanoids, a powerhouse cast and some incredibly inaccurate science. These are all great ingredients in a late '70s sci-fi movie, thanks to Star Wars. Yet The Black Hole couldn't pull it off -- despite a big budget and the perfect window between Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back, The Black Hole was only moderately successful, outperformed by other 1979 space fare Star Trek: The Motion Picture, Alien, and Moonraker.

Of course -- what do critics know? Who cares about box office math? Many kids who saw the film loved it, bought the action figures and comic books, and fully expected a Black Hole II.

A Disaster Movie In Space

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Source: (JoBlo.com)

The 1970s brought a number of successful disaster movies, and Bob Barbash and Richard Landau approached Disney to suggest a space themed disaster film, originally titled Space Station One in 1974, and they even referred to it as The Poseidon Adventure in space. Disney shelved the concept and then another factor helped to spark the creation of The Black Hole: in 1977, Star Wars made a staggering profit in its first year, so Disney tried to replicate Star Wars’ success by creating their most expensive film to date. The film cost $20 million to produce (which was twice the cost of Star Wars) and grossed $36 million. The Black Hole was released two weeks after Star Trek: The Movie, which outperformed Disney’s take on the space epic. The tagline on the film poster for The Black Hole read “A journey that begins where everything ends…”and indeed, this was a journey for Disney in a bit of a different direction.