10 Cloverfield Lane's Dan Trachtenberg is apparently making a Waterworld TV show

One of the… great(?) things about the all-streaming future is that TV shows and movies that might’ve been a tough sell in the relatively limited markets of network television and movie theater chains are much easier to justify and present to a potentially even bigger audience. Plus, with so many competing streaming services, they’re all so desperate for content that they might even throw a bunch of money at an idea for a TV show where the entire appeal is that it seems ridiculous throw a bunch of money it. CBS, for example, doesn’t make TV shows because it thinks it will be fun, it makes TV shows because it thinks they’ll be popular and will appeal to their audience. Streaming services, though, can just throw shit at the wall like “the floor is lava as a TV show” and end up with a hit.

This news story has nothing to do with stupid ideas that are appealing because they’re stupid, though. Not at all! No, we have no idea why we brought that up, because this news story is about 10 Cloverfield Lane director Dan Trachtenberg convincing some streaming platform to make a TV version of Waterworld—yes, Waterworld, the Hollywood punchline that was practically the definitive example of a flop for years and years even though it arguably did okay at the box office. The thing about Waterworld is that the cultural perception of it is that it was a huge disaster, and while there are surely people out there who think “damn, it would be so cool if somebody could remake Waterworld but get it right,” most people’s reaction to hearing about Waterworld would either be “oh yeah, wasn’t that a huge flop?” or “I have never heard of Waterworld because it’s 2021 and there’s no reason for anyone to talk about Waterworld in 2021.”

And yet, here we are! This news comes from Collider, which says producer John Davis is developing a new Waterworld show with Trachtenberg for some unnamed streaming service (though Universal Television is involved, and Universal has a stake in Peacock). John Fox, another producer, noted that they’re not “100 percent sure on the approach to the show,” but Davis says it’s going to take place 20 years after the events of the movie and be about “all those people, 20 years later.” Waterworld, as you of course know, took place in a distant future where the entire planet had been seemingly swallowed up by an endless ocean (or, to put it more succinctly, it was a Mad Max movie with water instead of no water). Kevin Costner played Wet Mad Max, a man who can breathe underwater who has been roped into an adventure to help a woman and a little kid (Tina Majorino, Veronica Mars’ friend!) find dry land. Also Dennis Hopper was there, drinking the scenery as a, you know, Mad Max-type villain. Listen, some kind of reboot isn’t automatically a bad idea, but it is the kind of idea that could only happen now, even if now is precisely the time when it seems the most baffling.