At WonderCon this past Saturday, Empire got the chance to sit down with Tron Legacy director Joseph Kosinski to talk about his next film, Oblivion. You can read that interview here, but Kosinski also dropped mention of one of the movies he’s attached to direct in the future: Disney’s remake of ‘70s sci-fi adventure The Black Hole. He told us that a new writer had been found for the movie and would be announced shortly. Well, the announcement has happened – Prometheus’ Jon Spaihts is aboard.
Spaihts will be taking over script work on the film, which has been in development at the Mouse House since at least 2009. Pacific Rim’s Travis Beacham has written several drafts, overseen by Kosinski while he was also gearing up to make Legacy.
The original Hole saw the USS Palomino and its crew discovering a lost ship, the Cygnus, hovering just outside a black hole in space. Upon boarding, they find a scientist and an army of robots, and learn that the machines contain the remnants of the ship’s human crew, which refused to obey the mad theoretician when announced he was taking the ship through the hole.
Details about the direction of the new movie are being kept under lock and key for now, though it’s apparently heading in a high concept, philosophical and darker direction. Kosinski hasn’t said whether he’ll make it his next film, and given that he’s worked on two big sci-fi pics in a row, he may be ready for a change. Plus, it’ll take Spaihts time to crank out a new draft or two.
Spaihts is also busy writing a new take on **The Mummy for Universal, a project that apparently also has Hunger Games scribe Billy Ray working up a competing screenplay.