There has been talk about remaking The Black Hole since 2009 but nothing has really happened since then. The good news is that the same director is still attached to the project, and considering what he's made since the initial news that's pretty exciting, but the most exciting news is who has just been announced as the writer.

He's a strong choice for the film and the pair will make a great team for a new version of the Disney classic which is screaming for something meatier to be brought to the story, something the new writer definitely will do.

The original The Black Hole tells the story of the research space vessel USS Palomino investigating a Black Hole in space, and while they're looking from afar they see that much, much closer, close to the point of no return than is deemed safe, is a ship, a lost ship called the USS Cygnus.

They venture towards the ship and discover that aboard it, the sole human survivor Dr. Hans Reinhardt, has built an anti-gravity shield that holds them in place, and the mysteriously missing crew may not be that far away.

As a reminder, or for those of you who haven't seen the film, here's a trailer:

We first heard about the remake back in 2009 when it was announced that Travis Beacham, who wrote on the remake Clash of the Titans and Pacific Rim, would be developing the script for the director Joseph Kosinski.

You may now be more knowledgeable about Kosinski now we've seen his excellent TRON: Legacy (Filmstalker review) and Oblivion is about to be delivered to cinemas, and he seems like an excellent choice for the film. The great news is that after all this time he's still the director of choice. However news from The Hollywood Reporter is that the writer of the project has changed, and this is even better news.

Jon Spaihts is the man who has been given the task of writing the new script for The Black Hole remake. You should know the name as he is the man who wrote the Alien version of the Prometheus (Filmstalker review) script, the one before Damon Lindelof came along with his idea and merged the two scripts together. I've read Spaihts' version and although it's very similar it's also much stronger, at least on paper anyway.

So it's with a lot of excitement that I read Kosinski is directing and Spaihts is writing the new script.

There's nothing known about the new version of the film, and more importantly if Vincent, Bob or Maximillian are returning, but the article does tell us that the film has been described as being a "big idea", with mention of "philosophical" and "dark tone" as well. Now it's not clear if those are words directly from the studio, writer or director but they are promising and do go with a hope I had from the original story that they might explore more of what The Black Hole meant.

Back in February of 2010 Joseph Kosinski did talk about the ideas for The Black Hole remake and they touch on similar subjects but also return to the original film too:

"It won't be a sequel like Tron...This one will be a reimagining. For me, it would be taking ideas and iconic elements that struck me as timeless and cool and preserving them while weaving a new story around them that's a little more 2001…

…I saw Black Hole as a little kid...What sticks out most is the robot Maximilian. The blades and the vicious killing of [spoiler removed - Richard]. That freaked me out and that's definitely going to be an element that will be preserved.

The design of the Cygnus ship is one of the most iconic spaceships ever put to film. From a conceptual point of view, we know so much more about black holes now, the crazy things that go on as you approach them due to the intense gravitational pull and the effects on time and space. All that could provide us with some really cool film if we embrace it in a hard science way."

So we will be seeing more about the Black Hole itself but we won't be losing touch with what the original had and there still may be room for the very cool robots. However I suspect the dreamy end sequence of the original will be replaced and the motives for being there in the first place will change drastically.

Oh, and there will no doubt be room made for a sequel.