This movie wanted to be as successful as Star Wars but was a complete failure

On May 25, 1977, Twentieth Century Fox Studios released George Lucas’s Star Wars film to US theaters, grossing $775 million, or (in 2024) nearly $4 billion! From this time on, exploitation cinema dipped into the sci-fi genre to ride this trend, and other American studios began to try to achieve the same success in it.

Disaster movie in space = guaranteed success?

Black Hole is an older project conceived in 1974 to focus on the disaster film genre, following the successes of Tower of Hell (1972) and The Poseidon Adventure (1974). In addition, the project suffered several setbacks, including the successive departures of its writers and directors.

Only three years later, thanks to the revolutionary special effects of Star Wars, the project was finally realized. Disney sees this as an opportunity to make a disaster movie… in space! Or the two most popular genres of the moment.

To direct the project, the studio chose Gary Nelson, a filmmaker who previously worked for Disney on a TV movie (literally called “The Boy Who Talked to Badgers”) and Freaky Friday, aka Freaky Friday with Jodie Foster. When Nelson is in control, it throws away much of the existing story inside “All the typical Disney characters, the family” As he pointed out The Hollywood Reporterand starts from scratch.

The story takes place in the year 2130, when explorers returning to planet Earth discover an abandoned ship located near a black hole. Palomino’s team decides to approach and that’s when things get worse…

The shooting of the film was carried out in great secrecy from October 1978 to the end of April 1979, i.e. “26 weeks from 7am to 7pm.”. The footage is expensive and there are only a few shots per day, but there is a good atmosphere, the cast is willing to participate in these large-scale shoots. The film’s many matte paintings (over 150, a Disney record), lavish sets… everything comes together to make it a success.

The end of filming is coming… we need an end!

But in a small “detail”: the film has no end. Out of 130, 125 days have passed since filming, and the finale was not written, and therefore, even less was filmed!

The story ends with “the ship enters a black hole”. In the end, it was chosen so that as the ship entered the black hole, it was followed by a rather unexpected sequence in which we see a hellish mountain reminiscent of Fantasia, then flames and rubble leading to a kind of glass palace with a feminine and dreamlike appearance. With a brilliant score by John Barry. A strange but daring sequence for a blockbuster… but one that will excite more than one viewer.

Black Hole was released on December 20, 1979 in the United States, about six months before The Empire Strikes Back, but found itself in competition with the first Star Trek feature film, which was released 10 years after the series ended, with the same cast. Return. Another complication is that Black Hole is the first Disney feature film not to have a “G” rating (for the whole family), especially because of the (beautiful) swearing of the character played by Anthony Perkins and the awesome scene.

And the film was a failure, shunned by the public who criticized it for its particularly dark aspect. With a budget of less than $20 million, it only grossed 35 worldwide. Years later, Nelson commented: “We all thought we were going to get the next Star Wars, which we didn’t. But the movie did well over time, so I can’t complain.”