" Waterworld was a good idea, and the script was the classic, 'They have a good idea, then they write a generic script and don't really care about the idea.' When I was brought in, there was no water in the last 40 pages of the script. According to the future brains behind Buffy, by the time he saw the script it was a real mess: The rewrites continued, and at some point the script wound up in the lap of Joss Whedon for an uncredited pass. Then, the script left his hands and went to David Twohy.
Photo:Īccording to original screenwriter Paul Rader, he went through six or seven drafts of Waterworld before getting burnt out. Waterworld may not be the first film that comes to mind when you think "adventure on the high seas," but it’s one of the biggest disasters in film history and its story deserves to be told. It’s an absolute marvel that this movie ended up making it to theaters at all.
Plus, he had to regularly perform life-threatening stunts. He was dealing with a divorce and constantly clashed with the close friend who happened to be the film’s director. While making Waterworld, Kevin Costner (who still maintains it's a good movie) was going through intense personal struggles. So, what happened with Waterworld? Was the original vision sullied by hired hands? Was the film’s star a straight-up diva? Did the elements themselves try to keep Waterworld from being made? You better believe all of that and more came together to make sure the film was a special kind of awful. Waterworld behind the scenes stories point to how this would-be blockbuster went straight off the rails. But the film wasn’t simply a flop, it was a complete disaster. The 1995 science fiction epic Waterworld is considered one of the biggest flops of all time.