Kevin Costner's Western Epic HORIZON Could Very Well Bomb at the Box Office
As a fan of Westerns, I’m excited about Kevin Costner’s upcoming film Horizon: An American Saga - Chapter 1. This is the first of four films that Costner is looking to make.
Chapter 2 is already finished, and Chapter 3 is currently in production. But, it’s looking like the first film is going to bomb at the box office, and I hate that.
According to Box Office Theory, Horizon: An American Saga — Chapter 1 is currently eyeing an opening weekend of between $11 and $18 million. THR is also reporting that the movie will take in around $12 million.
The first film had a $100 million budget and Costner financed the project independently and even put in $38 million of his own money to make sure the film happened.
This is a passion project for Costner, and I’d love to see a Western succeed at the box office. If the film ends up being good, I hope that audiences and fans rally behind it to push it to success.
The movie will be opening up against A Quiet Place: Day One, which doesn’t help matters. While I won’t be rushing out to see the horror movie, a lot of other movie goers will and that movie will win the box office with around $40 million on its opening weekend.
The other strike against Horizon is that it’s a very American-centric Western, which means it will have limited potential to make a lot of money overseas.
Westerns are one of my favorite film genres and it will make me sad if this sweeping frontier epic actually does end up bombing at the box office. I hope these reports are wrong.
Horizon: An American Saga chronicles “a multi-faceted, 15-year span of pre-and post-Civil War expansion and settlement of the American West.
“Experienced through the eyes of many, the epic journey is fraught with peril and intrigue from the constant onslaught of natural elements to the interactions with the Indigenous peoples who lived on the land and the determination and at many times ruthlessness of those who sought to settle it.”
Costner went on to talk about the audience’s experience from this movie, saying: “Can they, in a sense, feel themselves in this movie? Because that’s what I want people to feel in the dark, that [it] suddenly just absorbs them.
“We all know what happens when the lights go out — either something good, something average or something great. What I hope is that this is something that stays with them forever.”
Costner previously talked 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.”
The movie also has a great cast that includes Sienna Miller, Sam Worthington, Jamie Campbell Bower, Luke Wilson, Thomas Haden Church, Jena Malone, Michael Rooker, Alejandro Edda, Will Patton,, and Tatanka Means.
The first two films will get a dual theatrical release. The first film will be released on June 28, 2024, with the second film set to debut a couple of months later on August 16, 2024.