The Black Hole

The film was originally meant to take place entirely in a weightless environment. Technical difficulties led to the script being rewritten, so that gravity returned to the Cygnus once the Palomino docked with it.

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Director Gary Nelson wanted the then-unknown Sigourney Weaver for the female lead, and he recalls that the head of the casting department vetoed her because her name was not appealing. When Alien (1979) was released seven months before The Black Hole, Weaver would become a science-fiction icon.

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V.I.N.CENT. was originally to have more elaborate electronic eyes based on electronic stock-ticker displays, which would have given him a wider range of facial expressions. The electromechanical eyes did not work properly and the effect was abandoned at the start of principal photography.

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John Hughes of Tau Films (and previously Rhythm & Hues) created the "green grid" sequence seen in the opening titles. It was the longest computer-graphics sequence seen in a film at that time.

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Disney considered the quality of the special effects so important that it called Peter Ellenshaw out of a 10-year retirement to work on this film.

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This film and Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979) (released 13 days earlier) were among the last Hollywood films to include an overture, once a common feature of the "major" studios. This film's overture is usually cut from television broadcasts, but it appears in Turner Classic Movies showings and on the DVD release. When the film first received a Blu-ray release through the Disney Movie Club service, it was mistakenly missing the overture. That oversight was corrected on future pressings of the disc, but unless it is bought directly from the service, there is no way to tell the difference between the two discs when buying second-hand.

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Like many other science-fiction films released after Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope (1977), which made a fortune in licensed merchandise, this film had a great deal of tie-in merchandise. It did not sell well. Vintage toys from the film are much sought after and often sell in large quantities.

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The spaceship Cygnus was in fact a model 12 feet long (3.6 metres) and weighing 175 pounds (79.3 kg).

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Alan Dean Foster, who wrote the film's novelisation, was so horrified by the bad science in the script that he gave the producers a list of changes he thought would improve the story. Disney executives, upset by this, held a meeting to decide what to do.

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The visual effect of The Black Hole (1979) was created by forming a vortex in a round Plexiglas water tank and adding paints in different colours.

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Harlan Ellison was briefly hired as a scientific consultant on the film. On his first day, before lunch was over, he was fired because he pitched an animated pornographic film featuring Disney characters. Roy Edward Disney was sitting at the next table, heard everything and had Ellison fired on the spot. Ellison insists he was only joking, but others present say he spoke about it sincerely.

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Some of the surviving sentry robot costumes were later used in Steven Lisberger's test reel for Tron (1982).

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One of Disney's first ventures into adult-oriented material, this was one of the main inspirations for the creation of Touchstone Pictures.

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The Black Hole (1979) was the first film to be given a PG rating by Walt Disney Studios. At the time it was made, it was in fact thought to be aimed primarily at adults.

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This is considered the last major special-effects production made under the "old studio system." All of the elaborate special effects were created at the Disney studio and were not farmed out to outside special-effects companies.

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Gary Nelson was unhappy with the way the model shop had made "BOB," saying the robot did not look worn enough. He went to the clay model they had used as a reference and hit it several times with a baseball bat. Based on that model, they built a new robot.

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According to the press at the time, the film's score was the world's first digitally recorded film soundtrack.

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Reinhardt's robot Maximilian was modelled on the demonic Chernabog featured at the end of Fantasia (1940).

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Yvette Mimieux was given a short, curly hairstyle so that the scenes in which she appears weightless would look more convincing, since longer hair would flow in zero gravity.

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To shoot the special effects, Disney initially wanted to rent the Dykstraflex camera system from Industrial Light & Magic, the first computer-controlled camera, created for Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope (1977). Because the price and rental terms were unacceptable, Disney built its own version. The result was Disney's A.C.E.S. (Automatic Camera Effects System), radically superior to the Dykstraflex system, along with the Mattescan system, which allowed the camera to move over a matte painting, and a computer-controlled model stand.

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The film contains more than 550 visual effects shots, including over 150 matte paintings.

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The trailer showed Durant's death scene, though out of context, so all that was visible was a close-up of Anthony Perkins's face as he screamed.

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The laser guns originally had glowing tips that activated when the actors pressed the trigger, giving the animators cues as to when someone had fired the weapons. The actors would unconsciously press the triggers when they were not supposed to, and often accidentally fired at the actors.

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The robot sentries' helmets had very limited visibility, which made it difficult for the crew to direct and coordinate the actors, especially while firing the lasers.

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Dr. Reinhardt's dying words, "more light," were supposedly the last words of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.

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Nearly all of the dialogue in the film, except for a few lines, was re-recorded by the actors during the post-production ADR loop.

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Winston Hibler, a longtime Disney employee, had worked on the production only in its early stages before retiring. However, when the film, halted in 1976, resumed pre-production, Hibler was persuaded to come out of retirement. One of the first things he did was convince legendary matte painter Peter Ellenshaw to come out of retirement and work on the film. (Hibler died later that same year.)

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Dr. Reinhardt's ship was initially named Centaurus. It was renamed Cygnus, after the constellation in which the first known black hole was discovered in 1964.

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Reinhardt's robot was already named Maximilian before Maximilian Schell was cast as Reinhardt. Reinhardt would end the film merged with the robot, thus ironically trapped in "Maximilian's Shell."

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The film's poster can be seen in Sam Flynn's bedroom in the opening scene of Tron: Legacy (2010).

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Gary Nelson hated the original script, titled "Space Probe-One," but agreed to direct the film after seeing the concept art, which he considered "magnificent."

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When the Palomino crew asks Dr. Reinhardt how he has lived alone for 20 years, Dr. Reinhardt repeats "20 years" as if surprised. He then says perhaps 20 EARTH years. This leads to a scientific theory that gravity affects time. According to the theory, an object or person at the black hole's event horizon would experience time dilation, or a slowing in the passage of time. This means that although 20 years have passed on Earth, less time would have passed for Reinhardt and the Cygnus. How much less is not clear.

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The Swan in Reinhardt's dining room is actually one of the film's first concept paintings, done by Peter Ellenshaw.

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The film is set in the year 2130.

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It was initially conceived as a disaster film set in space, like The Towering Inferno (1974) and The Poseidon Adventure (1972).

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Reinhardt tells Durant to watch his journey into the black hole because it may be an "Einstein-Rosen bridge." This is also called a wormhole. This theory suggests that a theoretical passage through space-time could create shortcuts for long journeys across the universe.

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Maximilian Schell voiced his own voice for the German audio recording.

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A portrait of Admiral Lord Horatio Nelson hangs (albeit blurrily) in Dr. Reinhardt's cabin. Although an English admiral's portrait aboard an American spacecraft is curious, Nelson was known in his day as a revolutionary and often reckless tactician, which was probably why Reinhardt wanted it in his quarters.

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Director Gary Nelson had a cameo behind one of the masks that Dr. Durrant removes from one of the humanoids in the control room.

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Original female lead Jennifer O'Neill did a single screen test for the film before director Gary Nelson advised her that her signature long hair would not behave weightlessly in the film's supposed zero-gravity environment and would have to be cut very short. According to Nelson, O'Neill brought Vidal Sassoon to the studio to cut her hair, with Sassoon cutting an inch at a time while O'Neill fortified herself with a glass of wine after each cut. Returning home after the tipplefest, O'Neill was in a car accident that, coincidentally or not, left her unconscious for four hours and landed her in intensive care. Although O'Neill made her injuries out to be merely serious, they apparently worried Disney enough that the studio dropped her from The Black Hole.

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When the film aired in the UK on ITV during the daytime in the late 1980s, one scene was removed: the sequence in which the Palomino crew, revealed to have survived, travel from Reinhardt atop the mountain in Hell toward an unidentified planet (the deleted sequence shows an angel flying through a church-window-like portal).

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Tom McLoughlin also handled the coordination of the mimes playing the sentries and humanoids. His wife doubled for Yvette Mimieux in the performances.

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It is a known fact that the film's original title was Space Probe One, but the director disliked the name and every employee at Disney was asked to come up with alternatives. More than 500 were suggested, and The Black Hole (1979) was chosen.

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V.I.N.CENT stands for "Vital Information Necessary CENTralized." STAR (the name of the black sentry robot) stands for "Special Troops Arms Regiment." Old B.O.B.'s name stands for BiO-sanitation Battalion. All of this comes from dialogue spoken by V.I.N.CENT or Old B.O.B. during the film.

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Dr. Reinhardt was written as a parody of the Nazi scientist Wernher von Braun, who later worked for NASA and developed the liquid-fueled rocket engines that made space travel possible. Von Braun's middle name, Maximilian, also inspired the name given to Dr. Reinhardt's evil robot companion.

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The Palomino model incorporates a door from an 'Eagle' from Space: 1999 (1975), a kit clearly taken from the MPC 1:72 model kit of the Eagle.

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There are similarities between the research ship's journey into the black hole and Dave Bowman's passage through the star gate in 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). Both events are wormholes. However, both experiences are ambiguous. It is not known exactly what Bowman experienced, and this film seems to imply time travel, though it is unclear why so much emphasis is placed on the characters recalling quotes from past dialogue.

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In one scene, when Durant removes the face mask of one of the robot crew members and reveals that he is one of the original Cygnus crew, he exposes Reinhardt's secret. In the original script, this crew member turned out to be Kate's father.

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The ship orbiting the black hole is named the USS Cygnus. Cygnus X-1 is the name of the first astronomical object discovered that is widely accepted to be a black hole.

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Robert Forster was slightly injured on the head during the storm in the greenhouse.

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Topps produced a series of photo cards for The Black Hole (1979) in 1979.

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Part of the 'green grid' computer graphics title sequence can be seen on a monitor at Reinhardt's command console on the Cygnus bridge when Harry Booth asks him why he ignored the recall order.

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Yvette Mimieux had previously appeared in a Disney film: Monkeys, Go Home! (1967).

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When VINCENT first comes aboard the Cygnus and says to Pfizer, "They also serve who only stand and wait," he is quoting the last line of a sonnet by John Milton.

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There are many similarities to Disney's 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954). The crew's most intelligent member, Anthony Perkins, learning from the world-weary, isolated mad scientist Maximilian Schell, is like Paul Lukas learning from James Mason. The ever-reluctant hero Robert Forster is the Kirk Douglas character, while the sidekick Peter Lorre is a combination of Joseph Bottoms and V.I.N.CENT. The similarities include the scientist's crew (though it is very different here) and especially the order in which a crew member is buried at sea and in space.

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The upward-projecting control tower and numerous long, slender spires on the USS Cygnus's giant 12 ft model created an unexpected problem when the time came to transport the newly built model to the film studio. Models were typically packed in crates and shipped, but at the last minute it was realized that the standard crating technique could damage these small, delicate parts of the model. The builders brainstormed the problem and soon designed a suspended hammock made of numerous straps that would cradle the model like a cradle during the journey. The rigging successfully protected the model during transport, and the giant Cygnus model reached the film studio undamaged.

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Linda Evans interviewed for the female lead before Jennifer O'Neill was cast and before Yvette Mimieux was cast following O'Neill's departure. Evans, whose career was at a low point at the time, was seriously disappointed at being passed over; however, her commitment to The Black Hole would have prevented Evans from shooting the Dynasty (1981) pilot.

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With Yvette Mimieux's death on 18 January 2022, Joseph Bottoms and Tom McLoughlin became the last surviving main cast members.

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Dr. Reinhardt wears the Order of Canada, the country's national order and the second-highest honour of merit in Canada's system of orders, decorations and medals. It ranks second only to membership in the Order of Merit, which is the personal gift of the Canadian monarch.

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Disney promoted the film on its Sunday-night programme The Magical World of Disney (1954), in an episode titled Major Effects (1979) broadcast on 16 December 1979. In this cheerful semi-documentary, Joseph Bottoms appeared as the lead character, Major Effects.

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John Barry composed the Overture.

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Names considered for the role of Reinhardt included Harry Andrews, Peter Cushing, Herbert Lom, Curd Jürgens, Patrick Troughton, Christopher Lee, Donald Pleasence, Anton Diffring, Hardy Krüger, Max von Sydow and Jeremy Kemp.

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To simulate weightlessness, the cast had to do a significant amount of wire work in harnesses, with the wires painted the same colour as the set to conceal them. To prepare, the actors received accelerated training in wire work. Robert Forester said that after filming he suffered from spending so much time in the harness during the shoot.

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The robot "Maximilian" takes its name from Maximilian Schell, the actor who played its master, Dr. Hans Reinhardt. It is common to see the robot's name misspelled as Maximillian with two "L"s. Pre-production scripts initially used the name Maximillian, but when Maximilian Schell joined the cast the robot's name was changed to match.

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Principal photography lasted 26 weeks and was gruelling for the cast and crew; on some days only a single frame was shot after the actors had been prepared, rehearsed and filmed.

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Dr. Reinhardt's final words in the original version are "all light". In the German soundtrack, however, he says "Alles aus", meaning "All is over", in his own voice.

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V.I.N.CENT. defeats the robot Maximillian by drilling through his midsection with a high-powered drill bit. This resembles the way Maximillian killed Dr. Durant, so it seems a fitting end for the robot.

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Maximilian Schell, who receives top billing, appears after 26 minutes.

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It is asked how Reinhardt managed to overcome the crew of the Cygnus and seize the ship. The film's novelisation explains that, before the takeover, Reinhardt secretly reprogrammed the sentry robots and Maximilian to help him.

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How Reinhardt managed to overcome the entire crew and take control of the ship is never fully explained in the dialogue. The novelisation spells out exactly what is only implied: Reinhardt created his robot crew and programmed them to put down the mutiny and enslave the crew so that they could be lobotomised.

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In addition to his uncredited work on The Black Hole (1979), Roddy McDowall provided the voice of the robot Chuck in the Mork & Mindy (1978) episode "Dr. Morkenstein", broadcast on 14 October 1979.

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The Sentry Robots were played by comedian/singer-musician/mime Steven Banks and mime Don Lewis. The names of the rest of the Sentry Robots' cast have not yet been identified.

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Sharp-eared viewers who have also seen Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope (1977) may recognise the sound of the spaceship doors opening and closing; however, as of this writing, this borrowed sound effect has not been officially confirmed.

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Before The Black Hole (1979), director Gary Nelson had directed only TV shows. He wanted Maximilian Schell for Reinhardt. Schell suggested Jason Robards for the role, but accepted it when Nelson offered it to him personally.

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If the film were released today, it would have received a PG-13 rating, with the Motion Picture Association (MPA) taking a stricter view of the themes it presents.

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It is the 103rd live-action film produced by Disney.

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The Black Hole was the first film for Tom McLoughlin, Steven Banks and Don Lewis.

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The film's cast includes two Oscar winners, Maximilian Schell and Ernest Borgnine, and two Oscar nominees, Anthony Perkins and Robert Forster.

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When Vincent faces Maximilian in their classic David-and-Goliath confrontation, his eyes shift from round to square. They then return to normal and appear never to do so again.

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To promote the film, Disneyland built dioramas and placed them in the display windows of the Emporium store on Main Street.

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