Costner Epic Gets Some Last-Minute Fine-Tuning : Movies: Less than a month before ‘Waterworld’s’ release, the crew heads out to shoot additional ‘snippets.’ A production spokesman said the film will still open July 28, but added: ‘It’s going to be tight.’

Less than a month before its July 28 release, Universal Pictures has been scrambling to insert new footage into its high-priced action film “Waterworld.”

Last week, production crews were in Hawaii, off the coast of Marina del Rey, in the San Fernando Valley’s Sepulveda Basin and in a local water tank filming last-minute footage to enhance a movie that already has become the most expensive in Hollywood history at nearly $175 million.

The footage, described as “snippets” by one source close to the film, ranges from the harpooning of a great sea creature to aerial shots of the Hawaiian Islands. Sources told The Times the cost of the new filming is close to $1 million and, in one instance, required a crew of 60.

Dave Fulton, a spokesman for the production, said none of the principal cast--including Kevin Costner, Jeanne Tripplehorn and Dennis Hopper--was involved, although some doubles were used.

The filming of new footage follows by only a few weeks a futile attempt by the filmmakers to use live sharks off Catalina Island as a substitute for computer-generated sharks, which audiences at a test screening said looked fake.

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A source close to the production said the real sharks, however, “were a bust” because they became “lethargic” after being caged for too long. Some form of computer-generated shark apparently will be used in the movie.

The “Waterworld” spokesman refused to use the term “reshoots” to describe the new filming, instead saying they were merely “fine-tuning sequences.”

“This is a most exhaustive process,” he added. “We have almost 400 visual effects shots.”

Fulton said “Waterworld” would meet its July 28 opening, but added: “It’s going to be tight.” Last week the Motion Picture Assn. of America rated the film PG-13.

“Waterworld,” a futuristic “Road Warrior-on-water” action movie, required 165 days of principal filming, much of it on a man-made atoll just off the Big Island of Hawaii.

The production was mired in controversy, however, as its budget soared and creative differences developed between Costner, who is one of the film’s producers as well as its star, and director Kevin Reynolds.

Reynolds recently delivered his director’s cut to the studio and has since left the project. Costner is now overseeing post-production.

It is not uncommon for filmmakers to do additional filming after testing audience reaction to an unfinished version. But making such enhancements so close to the release date is always risky, some involved in the production said.

“The studio may say that this happens all the time,” said a source, “but remember, this was essentially a nine-month-plus shoot. This is really down to the wire and shooting at the last minute is very expensive and often a sign that a picture is in trouble.”

Another source pointed out that Costner is an exacting filmmaker and Universal long ago decided to do it his way.

“That’s the way it is with this film,” the source said with exasperation. “You just keep doing it and doing it and doing it until you get it right.”

Some of the additional footage, filmed last week off Marina del Rey, involved a sea creature that swallows Costner’s character, the Mariner.

In the scene, Mariner is aboard his trimaran watching a woman and girl fish for food. Seeing that they have no luck, he decides to jump in the water and show them how it is really done. With the help of his webbed toes and gills, a source said, Mariner stays underwater and lets himself be used as bait.

“All of a sudden, you see this weird fish come up and swallow Mariner and in the next shot, you see him eating the fish,” a source close to the film said. “You didn’t know what had happened. So, they now want to show the harpoon exploding out of the belly of the fish.”

Meanwhile, another production crew was filming additional aerial footage of Hawaii last week.

The original footage, said a crew member, “didn’t have as big an impact on the audience as they had hoped. It looked like something out of ‘Peter Pan.’ It looked too cartoony.”

Sources close to the production say Costner hopes these last-minute changes will be significant. He had decided, for instance, that his character was a bit morose. Sources say the actor wanted the Mariner to appear more heroic and not as brooding, dark and unpleasant as the character portrayed in director Reynolds’ cut.

“The irony is that is exactly what Costner told Reynolds he wanted the Mariner to be--dark, brooding and a loner,” said a source close to the project. “It’s tough to go back and change character development after the picture’s wrapped.”

Sources also noted a heated dispute between Costner and studio executives over the length of the picture. Costner apparently was pushing a version lasting 2 hours and 25 minutes, but Universal wants it at least 10 minutes shorter.

Fulton, the production spokesman, said the final length of the movie had not yet been determined, but “I can assure you, it will be shorter rather than longer.”

For more than a year, “Waterworld” has been the subject of intense scrutiny in the movie industry as its costs ballooned to historic levels.

The filmmakers have argued in the past that the film was expensive because almost all of the movie is filmed over water.

“Everybody is pointing fingers at them, saying, ‘You guys spent all this money and time,’ ” said one crew member, “but you’re dealing with one of the harshest environments to shoot on--the ocean. It can be unforgiving in terms of continuity. Everything has to be right. The sun has to be right, the swells have to be right, the clouds have to be right. You have all these obstacles to work around.”

The main battle scene, which occurs around the man-made atoll, took months to film, according to sources close to the production.

“A lot of time, though, there wasn’t a backup plan,” one crew member recalled. “That’s not to say anyone was at fault, it’s just ironic. A lot of people learned a lot of hard lessons.”