It's kind of hard to reckon with just how much of a flop 'Waterworld' was when it was initially released in 1995.
At the time, it was the most expensive movie ever made - believed to be somewhere in the region of $175 million - and only took in $264 million worldwide. You've also got to remember that in the '90s, cinema chains and owners took a hefty chunk of box office, so you could probably halve that figure and you've got some idea of how much of a flop it ended up being.
Of course, 'Waterworld' had sunk below the waves with audiences and critics too, and was the subject of just about every joke going. It even had a joke in an episode of 'The Simpsons'. Anyway, despite all this, it looks like Waterworld' might finally be getting the redemption arc in the form of a TV series.
Per a report in Collider, it's understood that the new series will be set twenty years after the events of the movie and revisit Kevin Costner's character, simply called The Mariner (yeah, honestly), and if the world is still, uh, watery? Dan Trachtenberg, who previously directed '10 Cloverfield Lane' and the opening episode of Amazon's 'The Boys', is understood to be attached to direct and the likelihood is that Kevin Costner is attached to it as well.
Could this work, you ask? Sure, 'Waterworld' was a blatant rip-off of 'Mad Max' except on water, and who's to say that something like this might benefit from a TV adaptation? Certainly the concept is rich enough that it could be conceivably be drawn out over a TV series, but the question is whether anyone would actually care enough about a flop blockbuster from years ago getting a TV series? Would anyone care if 'Battlefield Earth' got a TV series, like?
Well, John Travolta might.
