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And once home video sales and TV deals were taken into account, Waterworld ultimately emerged afloat in profit-far from a heavyweight hit, but fruitful nonetheless. Certainly, the film punched below its weight at the North American box office, but its overseas haul compensated for its domestic shortcomings. Still, despite everything, the persistent legend that Waterworld is one of film history’s monumental financial failures isn’t quite true. The initial budget of $100 million consequently bloated to a staggering $175 million. And Kevin Reynolds, the film’s credited director, found himself undermined by Costner’s contributions at every turn, eventually capitulating-leaving Costner to complete the project himself. Joss Whedon was brought in to make final revisions to the script, but he was effectively just a conduit through which Costner could impose his own authorial voice-over Peter Rader and David Twohy’s writing. Composer Mark Isham was ousted from the project after his initial score was rejected by Costner, and a new score was written by James Newton Howard instead. Tales of the film’s painfully protracted production, of the carousel of unceremonious arrivals and departures, and of Costner’s despotism as a producer and lead actor, are well known-largely eclipsing the film itself. Twenty-five years on, it’s now been reduced to nothing more than cultural debris-mentioned only as a curious piece of pub quiz trivia, or alongside Michael Cimino’s Heaven’s Gate and Elaine May’s Ishtar as notorious flops.
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Does anybody still remember Waterworld? Once the most expensive film ever made, Kevin Costner’s aquatic epic only seems to recede further and further as the years go by, its presence eroded by the tides of time.