“If you write me a Mad Max rip-off, I’ll let you direct it.” “Listen Peter, I’ve got some South African money,” said Krevoy. These were the days of “selling in” knockabout genre flicks to secure financing. Rader, looking for his break as a director, met with Brad Krevoy, an executive working under B-movie maestro Roger Corman. After a run-in with the dreaded “Smokers” – pollutant, cigarette-chugging villains, led by The Deacon (a deranged Dennis Hopper) – The Mariner rescues Helen (Jeanne Triplehorn) and Elona (Tina Majorino) and searches for mythical 'dry land'.įirst written in 1986, Waterworld has become like an old tale from the sea itself. Set in the future, when the polar ice caps have melted and covered the Earth’s surface in oceans, Waterworld follows the adventures of Costner's fish-man (well, a man with gills and webbed toes) The Mariner, who sails grumpily alone. But it’s also a fascinating piece of blockbuster cinema, made on the cusp of the transition from practical and digital effects, when summer blockbusters were less of a sure thing – sold on the spectacle of originality, not brand recognition. Parts of Waterworld are inspired other parts, of course, are a big wet disappointment. For an indication of what the film means to Universal, the Waterworld stunt show has been packing crowds into theme parks around the world for 25 years. Waterworld grossed $264 million ('That's not chump change!' says Rader).

It was dubbed “Kevin’s Gate” and “Fishtar” – after notorious flops Heaven's Gate and Ishtar – before a single frame was screened. (“And it was the most expensive film of all time for about five minutes,” says Rader.)Ĭertainly, the film was a storm of production problems: at the mercy of the ocean, with an ever-escalating overspend and brutal treatment by the press. Famed for being the most expensive film ever-turned-titanic flop, Waterworld wasn’t a box office disaster.

“I had the joy of saying, ‘Hey Bjarke, when you threw mad shade on Kevin Costner, I bet you didn’t think the screenwriter would be called up next!'” laughs the writer today. Ingels didn’t realise that the next speaker was Rader – the original writer of Waterworld. Rader recalls that hotshot Danish architect Bjarke Ingels led the discussion: “At the end of his presentation Bjarke said, ‘As you can see, this is very well thought-out plan… not a disaster like Kevin Costner’s Waterworld!’” Rader was there, alongside architects, engineers and developers, to discuss the building of a prototype island city – a concept being quite literally floated as a solution to rising sea levels and overcrowded coastal cities. In April 2019, writer and filmmaker Peter Rader attended a round table at the United Nations headquarters.

Waterworld movie boat