The Kevin Costner movie Steven Spielberg knew was doomed
Making a movie is hard. It’s not on the level of coal mining or performing open heart surgery in a combat zone, but it is no glamorous walk in the park. If you’re a film star, you probably get to spend most of your time on set hanging out in a cushy trailer, but if you’re the director or a hands-on producer, you will, at best, be under an enormous amount of stress and suffer from decision fatigue.
That is the best case scenario. A worse case scenario is that you set yourself up for inevitable failure and suffer the consequences mightily. Depending on which director you ask, the definition of setting yourself up for failure will be different. Some directors despise working with children and animals. Some can’t stand working within the studio system. In the case of Steven Spielberg, it all comes down to working in the great outdoors.
Clearly, Spielberg hasn’t been too terribly hindered by his past mistakes. He is the most successful filmmaker of all time as far as box office numbers go, and he’s been churning out those crowd-pleasing blockbusters since the ‘70s. The man is relentless, and I mean that in the best way possible. He must be a logistical wizard at this point. He’s made movies about the ocean, space, undead spirits, dinosaurs, war, and the inside of a video game. If he tells you that your movie is too hard to make, you should pay attention.
Kevin Reynolds did not. In 1992, he signed on to make a movie called Waterworld with Kevin Costner. The two had worked together on three films already, including the box office hit Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. They were confident that their post-apocalyptic adventure film about a rugged drifter sailing the high seas would be a success. They were imagining that it would be something like Mad Max on water, which admittedly sounds pretty cool. Unfortunately, an enormous production filmed on the ocean is a much more challenging undertaking than a low-budget indie set in the Australian Outback. Spielberg told them as much.
Paul Rader, who wrote the screenplay, revealed that the Jurassic Park director warned Reynolds before the film got underway. When Reynolds told him his plan and asked if he had any advice, Spielberg said, “Do not shoot on water! You’re going to need a couple of shots on water, so use second unit for that. Do all of your coverage in a tank or a stage.”
He knew what he was talking about. Jaws nearly went unfinished after the director tried to shoot it in the open ocean. The 50-day shoot turned into 155, and everyone expected the movie to be a disaster. Reynolds decided to remember the part about how Jaws defied all expectations and shattered box office records instead. Not surprisingly, it came back to haunt him.
Waterworld was one of the most expensive and shambolic movies ever made. The budget ballooned from $100million to $175m. The weather caused catastrophic problems, including the sinking of an entire set that had to be rebuilt. Safety concerns further hampered the production, and the camera crew struggled to get usable footage while trying to film on constantly undulating waves. Reynolds might not have listened to Spielberg, but he did end up becoming one of Hollywood’s most notorious cautionary tales for future directors to learn from.
