Seven drafts later, it found its way into the hands of Costner. And in 1989, he sold it to producer Lawrence Gordon ( The Warriors, 48 Hrs., Predator). Rader went off and fleshed the idea out on his own as a spec script. It might even cost as much as $5 million! Corman & Co. When he went back to Corman’s offices, he was told that his new idea sounded too pricey. When Rader left the meeting, the idea began to take seed in his brain and slowly grew into something bigger-and more expensive- Thunderdome on water. And as he sat in the office of one of Corman’s development execs one day in the late ‘80s, he was told that if he could write a Mad Max rip-off, there might be a South African investor willing to finance it. Peter Rader was a Harvard grad with ambitions to direct. The film that would go down as the most expensive in Hollywood history grew out of a pitch meeting in, where else, the offices of the notoriously cheap movie producer, Roger Corman. So I guess you could consider this is the case for the defense.įor a project that would end in ignominy, Waterworld actually began in irony. But I am convinced that enough time has gone by that it deserves its day in the cinematic court of appeals. I want to be clear, I don’t think that Waterworld is some misunderstood masterpiece. And after re-watching it for the first time earlier this week, I think it’s quite a bit better than that. I remember seeing Waterworld on opening day 25 years ago and thinking it wasn’t all that terrible. If I wasn’t writing this, I’d probably be thinking that, too. That this is just another one of those insincere, contrarian hot takes where a critic goes to bat for some dinged-up piece of pop-culture flotsam in the hopes of getting a few clicks. But let me propose a possibly heretical idea: What if Waterworld isn’t actually that bad? What if it’s actually…kind of good? In retrospect, there was really no way that it couldn’t have become the biggest cinematic folly of the ‘90s. For months, the tabloids had chronicled the film’s ever-escalating budget, its seemingly endless string of production delays, and the off-screen trials of its star, Costner, who’d become ensnarled in a messy private divorce from his wife at the time and an even messier public one from his Waterworld director, Kevin Reynolds. Like any $180 million ego trip-especially one top-lined by a guy who America had decided was overdue for a crash-and-burn bit of karmic comeuppance- Waterworld was doomed to fail before it ever stood a chance.
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