The Postman: Revisiting Kevin Costner’s biggest flop

Back in 1994, everyone expected Kevin Costner’s Waterworld to be one of the biggest box office disasters of all time. The press was labeling it “Fishtar” (after the infamous flop Ishtar) or “Kevin’s Gate” (after Michael Cimino’s Heaven’s Gate, which brought down a studio in 1980), but to the surprise of everyone, it actually did fine at the box office and turned a small profit. However, Costner did indeed have a massive box office disaster just a few years later when he opted to make another post-apocalyptic action movie, The Postman (which he also directed), which opened opposite James Cameron’s Titanic and laid a massive egg in theatres.

Reviews were harsh, with his take of a nomadic drifter posing as the world’s last postman widely mocked for its mix of action and over-the-top sentiment. It swept the Razzies, but even worse was the fact that it only grossed $30 million worldwide, which was disastrous, and ended up torpedoing Costner’s run as an A-list leading man. In fact, Costner arguably wouldn’t have another legitimate smash hit until his run on Taylor Sheridan’s Yellowstone many years later, which paved the way for another calamitous box office disaster for Costner, Horizon, whose already completed sequel is still sitting on the shelf.

But, did The Postman deserve the horrific reception it was met with in 1997? If it hadn’t opened so close to Titanic, would its fate have been different? In this deep dive video (embedded above), we look into everything that went wrong with Costner’s ambitious epic and how the actor’s incredible star power at the time might have blinded folks to how misbegotten a project this really was, with it one of the biggest-budget movies ever to fade into obscurity completely. 

Do you think Costner’s The Postman gets a bad rap, or did it give rise to some of Costner’s worst impulses as a director? Let us know in the comments.