Post-apocalyptic Movie Disaster (Photo Credit – Prime Video)
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In 1997, Kevin Costner’s The Postman flopped hard. An $80M gamble, it pulled in just $20M, leaving Costner and Warner Bros. nursing a box office wound no plot twist could heal.
The Postman was set in a world ravaged by the collapse of civilization. Costner played a drifter who stumbles upon a skeleton in a mail truck, takes up the mailman’s mantle, and starts delivering letters for a “new government” he just made up. It’s a classic case of the lie becoming reality, with people believing that Broadway’s Phantom of the Opera was still showing in post-apocalyptic New York while they scrounged for food in a “three-year winter.” What could possibly go wrong? Well, everything.
The film’s lackluster box office performance wasn’t the only problem. There were giant leaps in time that would’ve made any viewer scratch their head. Costner would arrive in a town, and then—surprise!—weeks or months had passed, but the narrative didn’t feel right. By the final battle, General Bethlehem doesn’t even recognize the hero—too much time confusion and a dull, dragging storyline.
And yet, there was Waterworld, Costner’s earlier high-budget disaster, waiting in the shadows. Waterworld cost a jaw-dropping $175M, a number that made the GDP of some countries look tiny. Despite earning $264million worldwide, it was considered a missed opportunity. But the real punch to Costner’s career came when The Postman flopped even harder, this time with a much smaller budget. It turned out to be a disaster of apocalyptic proportions.
Much has been made about Costner putting his cash into The Postman. After the failure of Waterworld, he believed in the film enough to invest some of his own money to complete the production. But instead of reaping the rewards like he did with Dances with Wolves—which made $424 million on a $22 million budget—The Postman delivered an epic fail.
For context, Costner also poured millions into smaller projects, like Black or White, which doubled its investment. But The Postman was a different beast, becoming a financial black hole.
The film’s disaster wasn’t just financial; it was cultural. It was a rare time when directors still had leeway to make big-budget risks, and studios didn’t fully understand how much oversight was required. The Postman came out post-Waterworld, so Warner Bros. wouldn’t soon hand out Dune-like budgets for a similar genre. This was a movie without a video game, action figure line, or comic series to help it survive in the broader media landscape.
In the end, Costner’s The Postman couldn’t compete with tighter, more successful blockbusters of the time. The movie was a sluggish, disjointed mess—a product of the ’90s Hollywood gamble culture where big names could push big budgets even after failure.
Note: Box office numbers are based on estimates and various sources. Numbers have not been independently verified by Koimoi.
