It Wasn’t Rain, Sleet, Snow or Dark of Night

As movies go, you might say “The Postman” hasn’t delivered.

Released on Christmas Day, the film directed and produced by and starring Kevin Costner, with a price tag approaching $100 million, has stumbled badly in its first three weeks of release, grossing $16.5 million. In the wake of widespread negative reviews, it opened at No. 8 and fell out of the Top 10 rankings over the New Year’s weekend, where it ranked No. 12.

Many critics couldn’t help but raise the specter of “Waterworld,” the futuristic 1995 action film starring (though not directed by) Costner in another post-apocalyptic heroic role.

The dismal launch of Warner Bros.’ “Postman” raises the question: How could a movie featuring a certified box-office attraction like Costner, who achieved success in such films as “Dances With Wolves” (his first directorial effort) and “The Bodyguard,” earn less money than Disney’s “Mr. Magoo”?

The blame is being spread around.

Some point to script changes that altered the film’s original tone.

Others blame ads that misfired and a preview trailer that left audiences unintentionally howling with laughter.

Some chalk it up to bad karma, noting that “The Postman” had the misfortune to open only a week after “Titanic” began setting December box-office records.

If that weren’t enough, the movie sought to portray a letter carrier as a hero of mythic proportions in an era when postal employees have become the butt of jokes on Leno and Letterman.

Finally, there are those who say “The Postman” simply fell victim to Costner’s ego and a studio’s unwillingness to rein it in.

“The Postman” capped a disappointing year for Warner Bros., which saw lackluster results from such heavily promoted films as the Robin Williams-Billy Crystal comedy “Fathers’ Day,” the Clint Eastwood-directed murder drama “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil” and the John Travolta-Dustin Hoffman thriller “Mad City.”

From its inception, “The Postman” attracted some of Hollywood’s biggest talent. It began in 1985, when producers Steve Tisch and Wendy Finerman optioned David Brin’s novel and brought in Eric Roth to write the screenplay adaptation. Tisch, Finerman and Roth would all go on to win Oscars for Paramount Pictures’ “Forrest Gump.”

But the original vision of what “The Postman” would be as a film changed along the way, not only in the future that it portrayed (early versions had a world devastated by a nuclear war and later an ecological upheaval) but also in the tone of the script.

Roth, who shares screenwriting credit on “The Postman” with Brian Helgeland (“L.A. Confidential”), said that when he left the project years ago, the story was spiced with satire.

“The versions I had done,” Roth said, “were supposed to be satirical and ironic.” He declined to compare the film to his early drafts because he had not yet seen the movie.

Over the years, Tom Hanks, Robin Williams, Michael Keaton and other actors expressed interest in playing the title role. Directors Barry Levinson, Jan De Bont, Richard Donner and Ron Howard were also considered along the way.

It was Warner Bros. Co-chairman Terry Semel, sources said, who decided to give the project to Costner, who like Eastwood and Mel Gibson, has a long relationship with the studio.

When Costner came on board, Tisch remained with the project, but Finerman was pushed out, sources said. The studio gave her a settlement and today her name appears nowhere on the credits. She declined to be interviewed for this story, as did Tisch.

In handing Costner the reins, Warner Bros. gave him wide latitude in fulfilling his vision. That is not unusual in Hollywood, where big stars are paid millions to bring people into the seats. Costner also came with a filmmaking pedigree, having won the 1990 Academy Awards for best picture and best director for “Dances With Wolves.”

“[Costner] has a way with the camera and a way of telling a story,” one Hollywood source said. “In all honesty, he’s a very smart man with good instincts. . . . This is a guy who appreciates any amount of passion over a project that is ultimately his. Does he have an ego? Yes.”

Just as Eastwood put his stamp on “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil,” so too did Costner on “The Postman.” Just as Eastwood cast his daughter in the movie, Costner also cast his children in “The Postman.” Costner also sings a duet with Amy Grant over the closing credits.

“Costner took over and there was no one stopping him,” said Ron Mardigian, a retired William Morris agent who once represented Roth. “He had a vision that didn’t work, but nobody would tell him that.”

Mardigian said early drafts of the screenplay that he read presented a “classic western-type structure” that didn’t take itself so seriously.

“It was a nice, two-hour movie,” Mardigian recalled. “It was just good guys versus bad guys and the good guys win at the end. It wasn’t that patriotic. It was about doing the right thing. It didn’t have all the overblown rhetoric [it does now].”

Costner declined to comment for this story, but in interviews prior to the release of “The Postman,” he took on his critics who complained about the patriotic, sentimental nature of the story.

“I like stories that raise the hairs on the back of your neck,” he told a press conference. “I’m not at all afraid of those feelings. . . . In this country, the people with the most freedom are usually the ones who are the most cynical, who do the most complaining.”

In another interview, Costner was asked by the Orange County Register if being a movie star was worth all the criticism and sniping he has endured. “It’s not worth it to me,” he said. “But I don’t know what to do about it. There are times when I want to say the heck with it and stop making movies, but I’m not a quitter.”

Through it all, Costner has remained a durable star that studios court. He currently is preparing for a Warner Bros. project called “Message in a Bottle,” which will begin shooting this spring.

Even before Costner finished “The Postman,” the premise presented the studio with a difficult marketing task.

“You had a postman at the center of the wheel,” one source recalled. “I don’t know if that’s the main flaw, but it’s tough to get behind something that is almost a national joke.”

Since the project was first developed, postal employees have become involved in numerous shootings of their colleagues and have also been depicted comically on TV in such sitcoms as “Cheers” and “Seinfeld.”

Another problem was the story line. Costner’s new film is also set in a post-apocalyptic world, not unlike “Waterworld” or the Mel Gibson film “Mad Max.”

“The only thing Warner Bros. could have done [with “The Postman”] was strip the ad campaign down to a Mad Maxian sort of tale where there is anarchy and there’s good trying to rise from it,” one person familiar with the project said, “but if you strip it to that level and ignore the postman altogether, it becomes ‘Mad Max’ or ‘Waterworld’ and [the public] can rent those. How many post-apocalyptic stories do we need?”

Some were confused by the poster ad that depicted a bearded Costner wearing tattered clothes and sunglasses walking beside a mule with an American flag in the background emblazoned with the words: “The Restored United States of America.”

“That ‘Postman’ ad was really quite ugly,” the source recalled. “A friend of mine walked by the billboard on Sunset and said, ‘The mule is looking better than Kevin Costner.’ ”

The print ads were later changed to show Costner and co-star Olivia Williams. “That’s textbook desperation marketing,” one source said. “They’re saying, ‘Let’s put a woman in the ad, then women will go!’ ”

Indeed, one of Costner’s core audiences are women over 25 and they are often dependent on reading reviews before deciding what movie to see. In the case of “The Postman,” while the reviews were mixed, the tone of the negative reviews became almost vicious at times.

“Warner’s star base is mostly older,” a source said. “That means they are always going to be review-dependent. The reviews don’t make a successful film, but are part of the structure of a successful film.”

While the initial performance of “The Postman” has been bleak, the film has yet to be released overseas where some of Costner’s films have been strong performers. “Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves,” for example, had worldwide grosses of $390.5 million in 1991 while “Waterworld,” whose reported $175-million budget made it the most expensive film up to that point, took in $264.1 million.