It was indicated in a lot of the reviews for A Perfect World where critics mentioned Costner’s middle-aged gut rather than the film, that knives were being sharpened, and Waterworld was to be the end of Costner’s career no matter how good the finished film was.Ī lot of the commentary turned downright mean-spirited in a way that would even give Perez Hilton pause. At this point, Kevin Costner-who was once a box office golden boy thanks to Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (1991) and The Bodyguard (1992)-had just suffered from two underperformers with A Perfect World (1993) and Wyatt Earp (1994), both of which failed to perform to expectations. Word was that the expansive water-based atoll set used at the opening had sunk several times, and bad weather was putting the Hawaii based production seriously behind schedule.
When word started to circulate in the entertainment press that Waterworld was running seriously over budget, the reports were indicating that this was the most expensive film of all time at $150 million (it’s now estimated at around $175 million). Last Action Hero actually ended up making a profit of over 20 million when all was said and done, but in the eyes of the world it was a failure thanks to the negative reporting on the film. Then in 1993 Arnold Schwarzenegger’s deeply flawed but fun Last Action Hero was criticised more for overspending and its stars ego than its actual quality. Some years later The Bonfire of the Vanities (1990) and Hudson Hawk (1991) was seen as the death of Bruce Willis’ career with many highlighting his personal stake in what was his pet project with Hawk. Heavens Gate (1980)-Michael Cimino’s ill fated epic western-was perhaps the first to gain notoriety, and Ishtar (1987) followed this later in the ’80s. I learned a lot about the media and how studios would eventually combat bad buzz by following the production of a certain movie named Waterworld.īy the time the bad buzz about Waterworld started to grow, the infamous Hollywood Turkey or Bomb was nothing new. Hard lessons have been learned along the way, and bad production buzz can cloud the public perception of a film before it had even been completed, and subsequently doom its box office chances. Things are very tightly controlled now, and information about troubled productions that go over budget and over schedule will not leak out if the studio doesn’t want it to. This was a time before the likes of Ain’t it Cool News and Dark Horizons, with the internet mainly consisting of message boards discussing the few sci-fi TV shows that were worth watching way back when. There was a time long ago when we had to get news about forthcoming movies from magazines and newspapers.
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