Why Waterworld and The Postman flopped at the box office

I just sat through Waterworld and The Postman...
Both of those movies burned through a massive amount of cash and barely clawed anything back at the box office...
I honestly don't get how they flopped so hard, especially Waterworld. It had everything a summer blockbuster needs—a solid premise, killer special effects, a huge lead star, and obviously over a hundred million dollars poured into it...
But the audience just wasn't buying it, and the critics absolutely tore it apart...
Look, I'm no expert, so maybe some of you movie buffs can break down what actually went wrong here...

As for The Postman, maybe it was a bit dumb to drop a similar flick so soon after the other one, but still, it’s a pretty decent watch...

I was wondering the same thing. Personally, I think Waterworld was great, and The Postman wasn't half bad either.

I’ve always thought Waterworld was such a solid flick—I could honestly watch it anytime... same goes for The Postman. 👍 🙏

I honestly think it's because back then, everyone was talking about how Costner was filming some kind of softcore adult movie, or something along those lines...🙂

gentleeagle11 said:I honestly think it's because back then, everyone was talking about how Costner was filming some kind of softcore adult movie, or something along those lines...🙂

I honestly think that would be the main reason someone would skip the theater, regardless of whether they're a man or a woman.

I honestly suspect that either Costner himself or someone in his inner circle had some sort of ongoing feud with the critics. To be fair, those films aren't even a step below many of the typical Hollywood hits.

Brenda Gray21 said:I honestly suspect that either Costner himself or someone in his inner circle had some sort of ongoing feud with the critics. To be fair, those films aren't even a step below many of the typical Hollywood hits.

So many movies have flopped with critics but still turned out to be huge successes...

To me, Waterworld is an utterly moronic and tedious film..
I just couldn't get into all that scrap metal and heavy industrial aesthetic..
I sat through it yesterday..
Mind you, had I known that Costner was essentially pivoting toward erotica—much like Seve did back then—I most likely wouldn't have even bothered going
to watch the movie.0
"Stolen" adult content serves as incredibly effective promotional material; if anything, they can simply exploit it for leverage.

Oh, please... Hollywood cranks out something like 23,536 movies like this every single year—some of them are bound to crash and burn. The Postman is just completely nonsensical; an American mailman saving the world? Really? And of course, they make sure to drop in some Shakespeare quotes for good measure. As for Waterworld, it’s basically just a spectacle—think of it as a sort of Water-based Mad Max. Honestly, just go watch actual movies instead of every piece of crap Los Angeles vomits out.

That is actually a rather astute question, and I have developed my own personal thesis regarding this matter.

I am referring specifically to high-budget blockbusters from the last fifteen years. In order to succeed at the American box office, these films simply cannot afford to be original in their core concepts.

If they fail to anchor themselves to some "external" universe—something that is currently trending or has long been etched into the public consciousness—they face the threat of total audience apathy.

Take the latter half of the 1990s; that era was definitively defined by disaster movies. Disaster was an incredibly potent trend back then, fueled by that general sense of impending doom at the turn of the millennium.

Then we move into the beginning of the 21st century, where concepts were almost exclusively harvested from established pop culture—ranging from the new Star Wars and Spider-Man, to Lord of the Rings, X-Men, Sin City, Batman, 300, and eventually Transformers, Cloverfield, Indiana Jones, Iron Man, and so on.

Every single one of them relies on an existing momentum; they are incapable of generating their own acceleration independently. (Of course, it goes without saying that they require such a foundation to maintain enough velocity to reach massive profits!)

Waterworld was conceptually unrecognizable. Any attempt to draw a parallel to Mad Max is incredibly forced and, frankly, a weak argument; that film was actually marketed as something quite distinct, a fairly unique idea in its own right.

The Postman serves as an even more extreme example of this phenomenon.

They lacked their own intrinsic "boost"—that specific catalyst required to drive revenue. If you look closely, you will notice that all these films (with a few exceptions, such as Titanic) derive almost all of their earnings from that initial surge during the first two weeks of release, after which the curve begins to plummet sharply. Without that built-in motivation, they would lose at least 70% of their commercial potential.

Just look at Star Wars: The Phantom Menace. At the time, it became the second highest-grossing film of all time worldwide. It is difficult to argue that the actual content of the film dictated that success—most people were deeply disappointed, quite frankly—rather, it succeeded because it rode the wave of the existing Star Wars brand and the massive fanbase that flooded the theaters.

Had Waterworld emerged from something deeply entrenched in pop culture, perhaps as a new adaptation of a powerhouse property (much like how Lord of the Rings was drawn from literature), it would have earned at least twice as much.

Not sure, haven't seen Waterworld, but The Postman is a great movie.

Then there was the absolute train wreck that was Renny Harlyn’s "Cutthroat Island"—you know, the one where Geena Davis plays the pirate captain. It’s actually this incredibly lush, grand pirate spectacle—honestly, visually it's great—but it just completely tanked at the box office. I’m pretty sure "Carolco" went belly up specifically because of that movie. Why did it fail? Who knows—the film is genuinely good.

"Waterworld" is a decent enough spectacle, I guess.
Actually, "The Postman" is even better in my book.

As for why "The Postman" flopped, it’s kind of obvious to me. Kevin Costner took the subject matter way too seriously—he played his character with a level of gravity that just didn't sit right with what the US audience was looking for.

Raymond Sanchez7 said:To me, Waterworld is an utterly moronic and tedious film..
I just couldn't get into all that scrap metal and heavy industrial aesthetic..
I sat through it yesterday..
Mind you, had I known that Costner was essentially pivoting toward erotica—much like Seve did back then—I most likely wouldn't have even bothered going
to watch the movie.0
"Stolen" adult content serves as incredibly effective promotional material; if anything, they can simply exploit it for leverage.

Well, that wasn't even a stolen porn clip. That was just a film he shot way back before he hit the big time with "Dances with Wolves"...🙂

Has anyone else actually considered that we might just be talking about bad movies here? Waterworld has a disastrous story and a plot that makes zero sense. Most importantly, it’s just plain stupid. It features one of the most irritating villains ever put on screen and the acting is pretty terrible.
Not to mention the lead character being a mutant, and that forced attempt at some kind of failed unhappy ending.

I didn't see The Postman in theaters; I caught it on VHS. Before watching, I had heard nothing but the worst things imaginable, so I think my brain just created a reverse effect, making the movie seem less bad than it actually was.
But if you really think about it, the story told in that film is incredibly naive. It might fly for the book it's based on, but for a movie, it's a bit much. Plus, it has a terrible villain who feels way too forced.

These two films are actually quite similar and they really tanked Kevin Costner's career (which sucks, because I've never thought he was a bad actor), so it's no surprise both were flops.

Richard Howard2 said:That is actually a rather astute question, and I have developed my own personal thesis regarding this matter.

I am referring specifically to high-budget blockbusters from the last fifteen years. In order to succeed at the American box office, these films simply cannot afford to be original in their core concepts.

If they fail to anchor themselves to some "external" universe—something that is currently trending or has long been etched into the public consciousness—they face the threat of total audience apathy.

Take the latter half of the 1990s; that era was definitively defined by disaster movies. Disaster was an incredibly potent trend back then, fueled by that general sense of impending doom at the turn of the millennium.

Then we move into the beginning of the 21st century, where concepts were almost exclusively harvested from established pop culture—ranging from the new Star Wars and Spider-Man, to Lord of the Rings, X-Men, Sin City, Batman, 300, and eventually Transformers, Cloverfield, Indiana Jones, Iron Man, and so on.

Every single one of them relies on an existing momentum; they are incapable of generating their own acceleration independently. (Of course, it goes without saying that they require such a foundation to maintain enough velocity to reach massive profits!)

Waterworld was conceptually unrecognizable. Any attempt to draw a parallel to Mad Max is incredibly forced and, frankly, a weak argument; that film was actually marketed as something quite distinct, a fairly unique idea in its own right.

The Postman serves as an even more extreme example of this phenomenon.

They lacked their own intrinsic "boost"—that specific catalyst required to drive revenue. If you look closely, you will notice that all these films (with a few exceptions, such as Titanic) derive almost all of their earnings from that initial surge during the first two weeks of release, after which the curve begins to plummet sharply. Without that built-in motivation, they would lose at least 70% of their commercial potential.

Just look at Star Wars: The Phantom Menace. At the time, it became the second highest-grossing film of all time worldwide. It is difficult to argue that the actual content of the film dictated that success—most people were deeply disappointed, quite frankly—rather, it succeeded because it rode the wave of the existing Star Wars brand and the massive fanbase that flooded the theaters.

Had Waterworld emerged from something deeply entrenched in pop culture, perhaps as a new adaptation of a powerhouse property (much like how Lord of the Rings was drawn from literature), it would have earned at least twice as much.

Look, the first Matrix movie didn't come from anything other than the heads of the Wachowski siblings, yet it still became what it did (and I'm strictly talking about that 1999 original).

Karen Smith9 said:Oh, please... Hollywood cranks out something like 23,536 movies like this every single year—some of them are bound to crash and burn. The Postman is just completely nonsensical; an American mailman saving the world? Really? And of course, they make sure to drop in some Shakespeare quotes for good measure. As for Waterworld, it’s basically just a spectacle—think of it as a sort of Water-based Mad Max. Honestly, just go watch actual movies instead of every piece of crap Los Angeles vomits out.

Film festivals??? 🙂

redowl90 said:Look, the first Matrix movie didn't come from anything other than the heads of the Wachowski siblings, yet it still became what it did (and I'm strictly talking about that 1999 original).

I had intended to bring up The Matrix as an outlier, specifically because it stands as one of the last truly cult films—the final representative of global phenomenon driven primarily by substance.

That said, we shouldn't ignore how perfectly it slotted into the geek subculture right at the height of the internet revolution. The timing wasn't entirely coincidental.

Furthermore, one must consider that its earnings were significantly lower compared to other massive blockbusters; it pulled in nearly three times less than Star Wars Episode I released that same year, making it quite obvious which film held the larger cultural footprint.

Richard Howard2 said:I had intended to bring up The Matrix as an outlier, specifically because it stands as one of the last truly cult films—the final representative of global phenomenon driven primarily by substance.

That said, we shouldn't ignore how perfectly it slotted into the geek subculture right at the height of the internet revolution. The timing wasn't entirely coincidental.

Furthermore, one must consider that its earnings were significantly lower compared to other massive blockbusters; it pulled in nearly three times less than Star Wars Episode I released that same year, making it quite obvious which film held the larger cultural footprint.

And what about the Sixth Sense?

Richard Howard2 said:I had intended to bring up The Matrix as an outlier, specifically because it stands as one of the last truly cult films—the final representative of global phenomenon driven primarily by substance.

That said, we shouldn't ignore how perfectly it slotted into the geek subculture right at the height of the internet revolution. The timing wasn't entirely coincidental.

Furthermore, one must consider that its earnings were significantly lower compared to other massive blockbusters; it pulled in nearly three times less than Star Wars Episode I released that same year, making it quite obvious which film held the larger cultural footprint.

You can't compare Star Wars to anything else. It's in a galaxy of its own.

redowl90 said:And what about the Sixth Sense?

You can't compare Star Wars to anything else. It's in a galaxy of its own.

You make a fair point; Sixth Sense was a massive hit because of its actual substance, but honestly, I view it more as a fluke than a standard. It managed to pull those numbers mainly because it hit theaters during an era when that kind of success was still somewhat plausible.

redowl90 said:You can't compare Star Wars to anything else. It's a completely different galaxy.

That’s precisely my point. Star Wars is built on the back of an intense cult following, and once you have that foundation, huge box-office numbers are basically a mathematical certainty.

Forgive me, but calling Waterworld a flop is just plain wrong. If anything, the movie actually turned a profit. Here is my data on the box office:
Production budget: $175 million

Domestic: $88,246,220 33.4%
+ Foreign: $175,972,000 66.6%
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
= Worldwide: $264,218,220

And that doesn't even account for video sales, DVD, TV rights, or anything else. I recall seeing figures confirming the film was in the black, even if I can't pinpoint the exact source. As for The Postman, that's a different story entirely. David Brin was a bit too much to adapt, and you get what you get.