“Beyond the Flop: Reevaluating Kevin Costner’s The Postman”
Back in 1994, many anticipated that Kevin Costner’s Waterworld would be one of the biggest box office disasters ever. The media branded it “Fishtar” (a nod to the infamous flop Ishtar) and “Kevin’s Gate” (after Michael Cimino’s disastrous Heaven’s Gate), but surprisingly, it performed decently, turning a modest profit. A few years later, however, Costner faced a true box office catastrophe with The Postman, another post-apocalyptic action film he directed. Released alongside James Cameron’s Titanic, it struggled tremendously at the box office.
Critics were brutal, deriding his portrayal of a nomadic drifter masquerading as the last postman for its clumsy blend of action and excessive sentimentality. The film swept the Razzies and, even worse, grossed only $30 million worldwide—a staggering disappointment that effectively ended Costner’s status as an A-list leading man. It wasn’t until his role in Taylor Sheridan’s Yellowstone that he would regain some of his former success, only to face another box office disaster later with Horizon, whose sequel remains unreleased.
But did The Postman truly merit its harsh reception in 1997? Would its fate have been different had it not been released so close to Titanic? In this deep dive video (embedded above), we explore the myriad factors that contributed to the film’s downfall, examining how Costner’s considerable star power at the time may have obscured the project’s flaws, leading to one of the most expensive movies to fade into obscurity.
