Jon Spaihts Joe Kosinski Inset - P 2013
Courtesy of Paradigm; Getty ImagesDisney’s reinvention of its 1979 sci-fi movie The Black Hole is getting a new engine.
Prometheus co-writer Jon Spaihts has been hired to kickstart the project, which has Joe Kosinski — the filmmaker behind the upcoming Tom Cruise sci-fi pic Oblivion — attached to direct.
Justin Springer, who produced Kosinski’s feature debut Tron: Legacy, is producing Black Hole.
Black Hole was the most expensive movie Disney ever made when it was released in 1979 with a cast that included Maximilian Schell, Anthony Perkins, and Ernest Borgnine.
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The original followed a group of space explorers aboard the USS Palomino who come across a lost ship, the USS Cygnus, hovering outside a black hole. Inside the Cygnus, the explorers meet a scientist commanding an army of faceless robots, who explains that his crew deserted him as he planned to go through the black hole. The explorers soon discover that the robots are the remnants of the former crew and that the scientist has no intention of letting them leave.
Disney put the remake into development in 2009. Travis Beacham was writing the script at the time, and Kosinski was working on the project while prepping the Tron reboot.
Among the signature pieces of the original movie were a threatening red robot named Maximillian as well as two kindlier robots named V.I.N.CENT and B.O.B.
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It is unknown if those characters will return, but the new take, which restarts the project, has been described as being big idea — philosophical and somewhat dark in tone.
Spaihts also wrote the screenplay for The Darkest Hour, an alien-invasion thriller produced by Timur Bekmambetov and is writing a script for Universal’s reboot of The Mummy.
He is repped by Paradigm, Circle of Confusion and Stone Meyer.
