It was also filmed on the open seas off the coast of Hawaii, and endured numerous setbacks and salacious behind-the-scenes drama during the tumultuous shoot, which a production designer later referred to as "18 months of hell." The project eventually came in ridiculously over budget, at about $172 million (roughly $280 million in 2019 dollars), making it the most expensive film ever made at the time.
Water world universal studio movie#
This was, after all, a movie in which Costner plays the Mariner, a mutated and super-tan human with gills, webbed feet, and a nifty catamaran who hydrates by drinking his own urine, scavenges the oceans for resources on a lawless future Earth ravaged by global warming, and gets drawn into water-based intrigue after reluctantly taking aboard a woman named Helen (Jeanne Tripplehorn) and a girl named Enola (Tina Majorino), whose mysterious back tattoo of a map purportedly leading to a fabled sanctuary called Dryland has made her a target of the Smokers, a Mad Max-style band of aqua-marauders led by the Deacon, Dennis Hopper's unhinged, one-eyed villain. Waterworld was viewed as a failure almost from the start.
"That, I think, really, is what led to it becoming as successful as it is."īut mention any of this to someone who hasn't been to Universal Studios recently, as I often did while reporting this article, and they react with disbelief: Seriously? Waterworld? Kevin Costner and Dennis Hopper in Waterworld | Universal/Getty Images "It's basic storytelling combined with really great stunts and effects," says initial project manager Norman Kahn. Brett King, VP of entertainment operations at Universal Studios Hollywood, tells Thrillist via email that the "Waterworld" show is one of his outpost's highest-rated attractions. the Extra-Terrestrial, Back to the Future, and Terminator 2: Judgment Day, and spawned similar shows at Universal's theme parks in Japan and Singapore (with another planned for China). It has outlasted attractions adapted from beloved blockbusters E.T. It's just another day at "Waterworld: A Live Sea War Spectacular," the improbably long-running stunt show at Universal Studios Hollywood.īased on a bonkers sci-fi thriller that's regarded as one of the biggest flops of the 1990s, the live show is still zooming along nearly a quarter century later. We've come to watch a mutated fish man tool around on a jet ski and kick some bad-guy ass in the desolate future that awaits us all. We're not here to learn about the potential ramifications of climate change.
It's a blisteringly hot day in the San Fernando Valley and a booming, disembodied voice is presenting a dystopian scenario to the hushed crowd of nearly 3,000 people sitting around me.
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