Kevin Costner's Epic Western Film Project HORIZON Is Planned as Four Movies
Kevin Costner is set to direct an epic film project that he’s been developing titled Horizon, and he recently revealed that he’s planning for the project to be four separate films.
The project is set up at Warner Bros. and New Line Cinema, and it will start production at the end of August. Costner says that it’s being planned as “four different movies” and that “about every three months, they’ll come out.”
He went on to explain to Variety that, “They’re all different films that all connect, so you’re watching a saga of these storylines that are happening.” It’s going to be a huge production as he is looking to cast 170 speaking roles in the films.
Horizon takes place over the course of 15 years in the settlement of America’s Western frontier, and focuses on both the settlers as well as the Indigenous groups that first occupied the land.
Costner went on to talk about the story saying: “It’s a really beautiful story; it’s a hard story. It really involves a lot of women, to be honest. There are a lot of men in it, too, but the women are really strong in Horizon. It’s just them trying to get by every day in a world that was impossibly tough. They were often [dragged] out to these places because that’s where the men wanted to go; women were following their men. They didn’t ask to be in these territories that were unsettled and dangerous, and life wasn’t easy. I’ve chosen to make sure that was really obvious, that that wasn’t easy, and how vulnerable people were.”
Horizon is Costner’s first directorial project since western Open Range in 2003. He’s only directed two other films, which are The Post Man in 1997 and Dances With Wolves in 1990. I’m happy to see that Costner is going to be directing again and this is going to be a huge undertaking for him with four films!
The project was originally pitched as an “event television movie” but Costner says “what [the studio does] with it will really be up to them because things change really quickly in how people want to see things and what they want to do.”
He goes on to say: “I’m happiest because at one point in TV — where you can get your largest audience — they’re going to get to see it the way I intended it to be seen. It will eventually be cut up into [hour-long episodes] or 42 minutes — however TV works. But their first viewing of it will be as four 2 hour and 45-minute movies. And every three months, one will come out. If you’re interested in those characters, the hope is that you’ll really want to watch the next one, but it won’t be in hour segments.”
Costner will spend eight months shooting the project and I’m excited about it! I’l looking forward to seeing how it turns out! Costner is currently shooting Season 5 of Yellowstone.