NaPodPoMo Day 24: The Black Hole - Lesser Known Geek Hall Of Fame

We enter the final week of National Podcast Post Month with our first movie entry into our Lesser Known Geek Hall Of Fame, Disney’s 1979 sci-fi film The Black Hole.







5:30 – Early Concepts



The 1970s were rife with disaster films such as The Poseidon Adventure, Earthquake, and of course the Airport series. The reason why they were so plentiful is that many of them drew big at the box office. The Poseidon Adventure alone earned $125 million in 1972, which translates to over $700 million in 2020 dollars. So the idea of a science-fiction disaster movie didn’t seem too out of place.



Writers Bob Barbash and Richard Landau made the initial pitch in 1974 about a space station in peril. The suspense would be getting the inhabitants home safely before the station is destroyed. This concept was very much like a sci-fi version of The Poseidon Adventure, which took place on a cruise liner and coincidentally also starred Roddy McDowell and Ernest Borgnine. The project was approved by Disney and given the working title Space Station One.



Barbash & Landau submitted their first outline to Disney later that year. Producer Winston Hibler proposed the danger be changed from a supernova to a black hole, as black holes were still a relatively new discovery at the time.



8:05 – Rewrites, Rewrites, Rewrites



Over the next few years, the film was constantly rewritten by multiple writers. The title would also change over time to names like Probe One and Space Probe One before finally landing The Black Hole as its name.



Unfortunately, Hibler passed away in 1976. Producer Ron Miller, who assigned Hibler to the film in the first place, took over the project. Miller could tell that the disaster movie genre was fading and decided to take the film in a new direction. More writers were hired for additional rewrites to focus more on the characters and less on the disaster element.



By early 1977, Disney had grown impatient. The project was already three years old with no end in sight, so the film was shelved. Little did they know everything was about to change



13:30 – Enter Star Wars



The entire film industry was rocked in May of 1977 when a certain independent film called Star Wars was released. Suddenly, science-fiction was a mainstream genre. Interest in the film, then still called Space Station One, was renewed. Yet another outline was submitted, but this version added emphasis on the black hole itself.



By this time, director John Hough left the project and was replaced by Gary Nelson, who was probably most famous for directing Freaky Friday...