Despite having a career full of ups and downs, the name of Kevin Costner It has barely reduced its popularity thanks to films like ‘The Untouchables of Elliot Ness’, ‘A Perfect World’ or the Oscar-winning ‘Dances with Wolves’. However, it also has some commercial failures, some really striking and well-known, such as the case of ‘Waterworld’, produced by himself and which had a not insignificant budget at that time (1995) of 170 million dollars. This figure made it the most expensive film to date, but what it was not worth is to achieve a box office collection that would serve to consider it a success, quite the opposite, remaining at 264 million.
Unfortunately for Costner, this setback did not come alone, and he had to bear on his conscience the fact of having refused to star in one of the best films in history, the best adaptation of a novel until the appearance of ‘Dune: Part 2’.
Tim Robbins took over from Kevin Costner… and more stars
Indeed, we are talking about ‘Life imprisonment’, the film by Tim Robbins and Morgan Freeman that boasts a spectacular 9.3 on IMDB. Based on Stephen King’s novel, ‘The Shawshank Redemption’, it was directed by Frank Darabont (King’s favorite director, also in charge of ‘The Fog’ and ‘The Green Mile’, another outstanding prison drama), and despite his fantastic reviews and having no less than seven Oscar nominations, the 1995 gala ended completely empty. That does not prevent it from being considered one of the best films in history.
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And Kevin Costner was one of the names that was mentioned to star in it. Although the role of Andy Dufresne ended up falling to Tim Robbins, this was by no means the first choice. Tom Cruise, Nicolas Cage, Johnny Depp either Charlie Sheen were some of the names that were considered to play Dufresne, as well as that of Tom Hanks. Hanks turned down the role because he was involved in another project, ‘Forrest Gump’, whose success leads us to conclude that he didn’t make the wrong decision either. And in fact, Costner also gave a negative response to go all-in on ‘Waterworld’, a decision that he would surely end up regretting in the end.
