Humorous Debate: Earth, Wind, Fire, and Waterworld
00:00:00
Speaker
You're saying there's no earth, wind or fire? There is neither earth nor wind nor fire.
00:00:05
Speaker
Well, I mean, does that mean there's water? Yeah, obviously. And Kevin Costner. With gills.
The Waterworld Production Saga
00:00:14
Speaker
Isn't Gil the character from The Simpsons? No. Actual gills on the side of his neck. And a big set that we'll build and then we'll get trashed by a typhoon and we'll build it again and the movie will lose lots of money but then gain it all back in the international market. Thus solidifying the international market for
00:00:33
Speaker
American production companies and actually changing the face of cinema.
Reevaluating Waterworld: Undeserved Reputation?
00:00:37
Speaker
I have not rewatched Waterworld ever since I saw it in the cinema and I'm actually quite curious to know, is it actually as bad?
00:00:46
Speaker
as it's made out to be, or were we told it was bad, and if you went back and watched it now, you'd go, eh, she's not as terrible as people think. I don't remember it being great. Yeah, all I know is that apparently it changed the model a lot.
Kiwi Cinema Delays and Spoiler-Free Era
00:01:04
Speaker
Now listeners who aren't New Zealanders might not know that it used to be the case that we would get Hollywood films six months or a year after they got released in the States. I can't remember which Star Trek film it was, but we were six months after the rest of the world got that film. Yeah, it was that way.
00:01:20
Speaker
all of them. And fortunately, because the internet didn't exist at the time, we wouldn't be bombarded with information about all these films that hadn't got to us yet. But it used to take forever because apparently the American studios didn't really care about the international audience so much.
Waterworld's Impact on Global Film Strategy
00:01:34
Speaker
But then when Waterworld turned to profit on the back of international screenings, they started thinking, oh, actually, maybe we should pay a bit more attention to other countries.
00:01:43
Speaker
Although they were still using international ticket sales as a kind of tax roll to go, but your film hasn't actually made any money because the only money that counts is money in America. Your film can make a lot of money overseas, but technically that's on a different column on our balance sheet. So I mean, yeah, made a hundred million there, but you only made 16 million here. So you're actually...
00:02:08
Speaker
$84 million in debt. Don't look at the other column with the really big number there. That doesn't count.