Only four days behind schedule and still headed for a December, 1979 release, Walt Disney’s The Black Hole promises to be a significant entry in the industry-wide Star Wars box office sweepstakes. This phantasmagoric space epic represents significant departures for the studio that brought the world such diverse family entertainment as Fantasia, The Absent-Minded Professor, The Living Desert, Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, and The Mickey Mouse Club.
A budget of $17.5 million makes The Black Hole the most costly film in Disney history. Never before has virtually every stage, shop and facility on the Disney lot been devoted to a single project. More importantly, for the first time in its history, the studio is taking a back seat to the production itself. Company letterheads say The Black Hole, not Walt Disney Productions, and it is rumored that this will hold true even for ad posters and campaigns. The entire cast is made up of actors not previously associated with the Disney G-rated line of products. And it seems likely that The Black Hole will be rated PG, a startling departure for the “G” oriented studio. Disney spokesmen claim, “We are making this one for adults.”
The setting for The Black Hole is the distant future, when space has proved to be a realm of limitless resources. A story unfolds involving a deep-space probe to the vicinity of a black hole-where explorers encounter a space habitat of gargantuan proportions overlooked by a Captain-Nemo-type ambivalent villain. The space czar maintains an army of marauding robots and harbors peculiar designs on the universe. During the film’s climax, the Earth probe must find a way to cooperate with the dangerous man, in order to forestall their being pulled irreversibly into the dreaded black hole. Disaster occurs despite their efforts, and only a handful of people and robots make a daring escape.
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