Joseph Kosinski’s remake of Disney’s sci-fi classic The Black Hole will keep the dark elements and advance the science, the TRON: Legacy director reveals, speaking exclusively to SciFiNow.
The original film, which starred Maximilian Schell, Robert Forster and Anthony Perkins, told the story of a group of a deep space exploration crew who find a long-missing ship researching black holes. The Black Hole is notorious for being one of the darkest Disney films ever made, and Kosinski tells us that the aspects we love will remain.
“There is some darkness, there’s this incredibly surreal and non-Disney like ending to the film that is pretty spectacular and it’s one of the weird aspects of that film,” he explains.
“You know, there are also pretty violent deaths in that movie if you remember, Anthony Perkins being chewed up by Maximilian, there are some dark elements to it. It’s such a peculiar movie, it’s got this incredible score by John Barry, it’s like this 50s science fiction movie trying to be Star Wars at the same time, it’s such an odd film but some fundamentally really interesting central concepts. So we’re going to keep all the stuff that I loved and update the rest with more modern thinking.’
With TRON 3 also on the way, Kosinski clearly has a love for the sci-fi of the late 70s and early 80s. “I was born in ‘74 so those movies from 1979 through the mid 80s were kind of a sweet spot for me as a kid,” he remembers.
“But Black Hole is another one where what we know now about the phenomena and the science of black holes compared to 30 years ago, or 35 years ago when the first one was made, we know so much more now and it’s exciting to take some of these concepts which almost seem like fantasy concepts but are real concepts, the way black holes bend time and space, to be able to incorporate those into a kind of an adventure film about deep space travel is very exciting. So we have Jon Spaihts, who wrote Prometheus, is actually working on that draft right now.”
The Black Hole’s fanbase may not be as rabid as TRON’s, but there will always be pressure on directors revisiting classic material. However, Kosinski explains that each of his films is personal to him, which brings its own pressure.
“For me, you’re always trying to bring your own ideas, your own sensibility. There’s no more or less pressure with films building on an existing property. Maybe there’s a little less freedom because there are established characters and themes as opposed to something like Oblivion where it really was a blank slate, but I wouldn’t say one’s necessarily easier than the other.”
Oblivion is out now, pick it up on on Blu-ray for £14.99 and DVD for £9.99 from Amazon.co.uk.
