"Fine. But what's a black hole?" you may be saying. A black hole is a strange place in space. Nothing comes out of it, not even light. That makes it invisible. Black holes are full of powerful gravitational forces. Anything, including an astronaut, falling into a black hole would first be flattened out long and thin like a stretched rubber band. Then, before reaching the bottom, he would be crushed smaller than a speck of dust! No one's ever really seen a black hole, but many physicists believe they do exist.
The movie of The Black Hole took two years to make. Two film crews worked at the same time, but independently of each other. One crew shot the live-action scenes, while the other crew handled the special effects. Crew number one didn't know what crew number two was up to! That's because the story and script were kept secret. The filming was so top secret that even the actors didn't know how the movie would end!
But there was a good reason for all this secrecy. The makers of the movie didn't want to get ripped off. "We didn't want to work on The Black Hole for two years, and then find a cheap version of it on TV two weeks before we opened the film," explains producer Ron Miller. [A case in point is the recent remake of Godzilla - it has a 'ripoff' version airing on network television. -DW]
The Black Hole is a first for Walt Disney Productions. It's the first PG-rated Disney movie ever released!
"We want that PG rating to expand our audiences," director Gary Nelson says. "We want teenagers and people over 18 to know that this is a science-fiction film that belongs right up there with Star Wars and Close Encounters. It used to be that nobody between 17 and 40 went to Disney films. We know that The Black Hole will change that way of thinking!"
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