Kevin Costner could have phoned it in. Yellowstone, TV maven Taylor Sheridan’s neo-Western melodrama Paramount Network, was riding high in the ratings going into 2023, and Costner had a strong platform in the leading role. But during negotiations for season 6, the 69-year-old actor walked away. He had other dreams: specifically, directing a four-part Western epic titled Horizon. Costner has blamed creative differences with Paramount and Sheridan over reported flaring tensions on the Yellowstone set, but ultimately, as he said in a recent divorce proceeding, he left over scheduling conflicts — with his own movie. (Next time you don’t want to follow through on previously made plans, feel free to use this same excuse.)
Soon we’ll see whether the risk and subsequent sensational Hollywood kerfuffle pays off; Horizon: An American Saga Chapter 1 and Chapter 2 both hit theaters this summer.
Like Dancing with Wolves or Open Range, Horizon puts Costner back in the saddle as both director and star. The double feature’s first trailer promises more of his particular Western mode: sweeping vistas, raw depictions of the West, gunslinger shootouts, contemplations on the nature of man, and plenty of horses. But Costner hopes the breadth of his story will offer a new perspective on the American West. Or at least the American Western.
“We have a lot of Westerns that aren’t good because they get too simplified, and Westerns are, in fact, complicated,” Costner said at a trailer launch event earlier this month. The filmmaker embraces the man-comes-to-town formula of the West — “when it’s done right, we never forget it, but too often, it’s just a convenience for a hero guy to knock down a dumb guy.” But he intends for Horizon to go deeper. “This isn’t Disneyland. These were real lives. People just making their way, women just trying to keep their families clean, fed — [they] basically worked to death. Women’s lives were short, all they did was work. And so I’m drawn to that. I’m always gonna get to my gunfight — but I’m drawn to the little things of what people had to endure.”
The trailer for Horizon is light on plot and heavy on the cast, which according to previous reports, includes 170 speaking roles. Costner leads the pack as the classic Western cowboy type, with Sam Worthington, Jenna Malone, Michael Rooker, Tatanka Means, Sienna Miller, Danny Huston, Luke Wilson, and many more That Guys filling out the stable. Jamie Campbell Bower, who recently played Vecna on Stranger Things, loses the hellish makeup in favor of a 10-gallon hat as he plays the saga’s villain. And what connects them all, from indigenous peoples to longtime ranchers and a wave of newcomers to the West, is the fallout of the United States’ bloodiest conflict.
“The Civil War is a mark on our country,” Costner says. “However you choose to look at it, the loss of life, the reason it was fought […] we’re still trying to come to terms with as a nation. But it closed the West in a blink of an eye. The Civil War actually kept the focus of the country on the East Coast, but the minute that war was over in 1865, the country looked West again, and in 25 years, something that had been there for thousands of years was over.
“Our national appetite was to be satisfied at the disadvantage to those who had been there and flourished and were living in their own way. And I don’t know that I’ve ever come to terms with that myself. I’d say I’m ashamed of what happened… I don’t know that I’m ashamed or embarrassed, but I wanted to project what really happened. There was a great injustice that occurred in the West, but it doesn’t minimize the courage it took for my ancestors to actually cut loose and go there. I recognize the resourcefulness, the bravery it took to leave and make this march across this country. It’s just a movie that kind of shows the clash of cultures. It’s our history.”
The big goal for the Horizon movies was dimensionalizing all sides of the conflict, requiring him to produce a film that went far beyond the traditional scope of a two-hour Western. “I think it’s really a mistake sometimes to judge other people by how they had to perform or act in another century,” he says, emphasizing how the film weaves together stories of post-traumatic stress, the fortitude necessary to settle the West, and “the fact native Indians were crushed under this movement.”
Costner’s grand thesis on Manifest Destiny has been percolating in his mind for ages. Originally written under the title Sidewinder in 1988, the actor-director gave it the codename Horizon as he passed it around Hollywood, because he felt at the time, “people were copying” his developing projects, from Robin Hood to Wyatt Earp. (That includes his serious beef over 1993’s Tombstone.) Horizon started and stopped over the decades, with Disney almost producing the film, but Costner says he ultimately had to self-finance it to realize his sprawling vision. Reports circulated in 2023 that the actor had mortgaged real estate in order to pull together $100 million to shoot the first two chapters of Horizon. He verified that number for present press, saying it all went to shooting authentically on locations across Utah.
Not since Warner Bros. Pictures released two Matrix sequels within six months has a studio bucked the traditions of distribution in the way that’s planned for Costner’s saga. WB will once again be the risk-takers, distributing Chapter 1 on June 28 and Chapter 2 on Aug. 16. Whether we get Chapter 3 and Chapter 4 likely depends on whether Costner in his classic mode can draw Yellowstone crowds — and all of their friends, based on the price tag — to theaters. At the very least, he thinks he’s made two movies for the whole family.
“I hope nobody is put off by the R. Because I don’t make R [movies] gratuitously. I make Rs that a 12-year-old… If somebody says to them, ‘This is going to be a little hard at a moment, but I want you to see it. I want my little girl to see what their great, great, great grandmother went through.’ I hope a family does go see it.”
