Kevin Costner Is Determined to Finish His HORIZON Western Saga and Teases "Devastating" Chapter 3
Kevin Coster has had a rough ride with the release of the first film in his western saga Horizon: An American Saga - Chapter 1. The movie was met with mixed reviews and was a big disappointment at the box office.
Horizon: An American Saga - Chapter 2 recently premiered at the Venice Film Festival, and Costner talked about the future of the franchise and is determined to finish the four-film saga. He seems pretty optimistic about it.
Costner is projected to pay $98 million himself for the first three films, and he says that financing the fourth movie will take it to over $100 million.
When talking about the first movie, the director said: “It didn’t have overwhelming success,” and noted, “I’ve had a lot of movies that way that have stood the test of time.”
When talking about the delay of the release of Chapter 2, Costner explained: “That was a studio decision to release it six weeks later. And it became a studio decision to not.
“I always wanted to come out with the movies about five, six months apart, and that was going to allow me to come to Venice… When it was six weeks, I wasn’t going to get to come here… But what happened is a miracle in life… My plan was always to bring it to Venice, and suddenly it has happened.”
When asked about the future of the series, Costner teased: “If there’s anything that you expect from Part 2, you realize that 2 gets harder than 1. It’s hard to go west. Three is the same thing. It gets harder.
“But I will tell you this, Chapter 3 is devastating. It’s devastating because you begin to know all these people and life keeps coming at them, and you will see that.”
When talking about the production of Chapter 3, he said: “I have to hurry and not let the rock fall back downhill. I’ve gotta go put my hands on it again and start to push it up. It’s a rope that I cannot let go of.”
At this point, he got emotional, and added: “I don’t know how I’m gonna make 3 right now, but I’m gonna make it.”
When talking about why he chose this subject matter for a film, he shared: “I just love the journey of America, the promise of what America was… When the people who left Europe to cross the Atlantic Ocean, they saw something they just couldn’t possibly believe, a gigantic continent with not a single building.
“And the eyes of the world opened up, and they would come to America with a promise… That was about a 300, 400 year march across America from sea to shining sea, and it was done by your ancestors and by mine.
“And it was into a land where there was nothing, just the animals and the people who chose to live lightly on it, and the struggle that they didn’t want to give it up. So one promise was taking hold and another one was being lost.”
He added: “There’s something about the West, it’s not a land in Disneyland, it’s a place where it was difficult, and it happened in inches. And I just wanted desperately to tell that story, and I found that the best way to tell that story was ultimately almost through the eyes of women.
“Women run right down the middle of every one of the storylines that are in Horizon. That’s the kind of movie that I wanted to bring to the world, and to even remind my own country that it was a struggle and it’s part of our history.”
He continued to say that Horizon “is not a message to my country; it’s a reminder to my country of how difficult it was that people made this journey… It’s not a message politically to anyone. You know, movies speak to us, and when the lights go out, they speak to our hearts individually. We can all watch the same thing in the dark, we’ll all live the same dream, but it will mean something different to all of us.”
I loved the first Horizon movie and I really hope that Costner presses forward and gets to finish telling this epic American West story that he’s so passionate about. I want to see how this story plays out with these characters!
Source: Deadline