Joseph Kosinski’s ‘Black Hole’ Remake Was Canned Due to ‘Interstellar’ Similarities

Director Joseph Kosinski is getting a lot of buzz thanks to his newest biggest screen hit Top Gun: Maverick, which recently hit a billion dollars at the box office. The feat will certainly make Kosinski a big name amongst studios for their biggest projects.

In 2009, it was reported that Kosinski and his Tron: Legacy team were set to tackle a remake of Disney’s 1979 Sci-fi/Adventure, The Black Hole. Since then, the project has been in limbo at the studio, which included a rewrite from Jon Spaihts (Prometheus), before being ultimately canned. However, Kosinski is still mulling over his interest in reviving it if that opportunity presents itself, as he’d like to reunite with Disney.

While speaking with TheWrap, Joseph Kosinski shared his love for the project, the trade revealed that his version shared “too many similarities” to Christopher Nolan’s space drama Interstellar which ultimately killed it. That said, Kosinski says he is still very much interested in reviving the project:

“I still feel like that movie is one of the most unique that Disney’s ever made, the original, I mean. It’s wild. The idea of a journey to a black hole is still one of those things that is very intriguing because it’s not science fiction. They really exist, and all the effects that happen around them are real physics. So there is a great story to be told about that journey. I just, at this point, I haven’t figured out what that would be for me yet.”

Disney’s The Black Hole plot is as follows, in the future, a spaceship dubbed the USS Palomino is on its way back to Earth when it discovers another ship that had been assumed missing, the USS Cygnus. Kate McCrae (Yvette Mimieux), a scientist aboard the Palomino, learns that it’s the same ship upon which her father had served as a crew member. When the Palomino’s crew boards the Cygnus, they are met by Dr. Reindhardt (Maximilian Schell) and a bizarre, faceless army who plan to be the first people ever to explore a black hole.

The film also starred Anthony Perkins, Robert Forster, Joseph Bottoms, and Ernest Borgnine. With a production budget of $20 million, plus another $6 million for advertising, it was at the time the most expensive picture ever produced by Disney. The film had a record opening weekend for Disney with a gross of $4.7 million from 889 theatres. During its theatrical release, the movie grossed $35.8 million in the United States and Canada, from which it returned $25 million in box office rentals. Despite low reviews, the film has since become a cult classic.

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