Forty years later, director Gary Nelson, along with actors Joseph Bottoms and the late Robert Forster, look back at the big-budget space adventure: "Expectations were so high."
“A journey that begins where everything ends…” That was the tagline on the poster for The Black Hole, Disney’s $20 million sci-fi gamble in the post-Star Wars game, essentially spelling out its reality in the marketplace in 1979.
With its starfield setting, stormtrooper-like sentries, swashbuckling laser battles and high-end special effects work — not to mention saturated merchandising by the Disney machine — The Black Hole was clearly a response to the 1977 George Lucas juggernaut and was destined for direct comparisons when it arrived in theaters two-and-a-half years later.
[…]
