Everyone’s talking about one of the boldest cinematic gambles in years, but few have bothered to see whatKevin Costnerinvested in.Horizon: An American Saga - Chapter 1, released last weekend to underwhelming returns, earning a lowly$11 million from over 3,000 theaters. On the surface, this result doesn’t seem disastrous, but this lone film doesn’t tell the whole story. Chapter 2 will hit theaters this August, and two additional chapters are in the works. Chapter 1 was budgeted at $100 million, with the budget primarily funded by Costner.
Based on the tepid response to the first installment of this ambitious Western epic,Costner garnering mass audience interest in Chapter 2 will be an uphill battle.Every appreciator of film as an art form pulled for Costner and his audacious swing, but there is a reasonwhy audiences expressed little interestin this bloated, meandering, and unfocused throwback to a stagnant genre. Costner, who revitalized his career by starring in the hit Paramount seriesYellowstone,forgot he was making a movie, which is evident in the shaggy pacing ofHorizon.
Kevin Costner Brought a TV Mindset to ‘Horizon’
Costner, one of the brightest stars of the last 30 years, took his talents to the small screen in 2018with the premiere ofYellowstone, a soap Western evoking aflavor of pastiche Americanararely depicted in modern media. It’s a show for an older demographic — the kind that the streaming boom often disregards. Everything looked peachy for Costner in the late stage of his career as a television star, but then suddenly,Costner walked away from theTaylor Sheridanshow. He had his eyes on something grander, more ambitious, and seemingly unattainable: a 4-part self-financed Western epic exclusively for the big screen. Costner facing doubt over the prospect of an epic historical Western is nothing new,as his directorial debut,Dances With Wolves, was a smash hit and dominated the Academy Awards. Over 30 years later, he would return to write and direct another sweeping Western saga, chronicling American settlement in the West before and after the Civil War across four storylines.
Unless the film legs it out in the following weeks,Horizondoesn’t appear to have the makings of a triumphant showcase from Costner. Having an extended stay at the box office requires positive word-of-mouth, somethingHorizonlacks.Early reviews of its premiere at the Cannes Film Festivalwere less than ideal. The positive and negative reviews had one consensus: the film is most certainly an incomplete story — to be continued with subsequent installments. While this is an obvious point considering the film has “Chapter 1” in its title, hearing this news is usually discouraging. Furthermore, the most damning criticism thrown atHorizonwas thatit had the pacing and narrative arc of a television series.ComparingHorizonto TV programming might seem like an implicit bias due to Costner’s recent stint on a Western series, but the criticism makes sense upon viewing.
Meandering pacing, juggling multiple storylines and character arcs, and cliffhangersbode well for television. The medium encourages a more passive viewing experience, allowing viewers to mentally check in and out of specific plots that spike their interest. Television is heavily serialized, whichtrains viewers to not expect resolution and a tight three-act structure with each episode. Film, on the other hand, aims for the opposite. When a film (a 3-hour one nonetheless) carries the urgency (or lack thereof) of TV,it creates a sluggish viewing experience.While not an abject failure,Horizonultimately fails to live up toCostner’s ambitious cinematic frontier. The root of its problems lies in the inextricable traits that the film shares with television, particularly the lack of narrative centrality.
Kevin Costner’s ‘Horizon’ Doesn’t Have a Main Point
The storylines inHorizon: Chapter 1consist of Frances Kittredge (Sienna Miller) and her daughter taking shelter at a Union Army camp led by Lieutenant Trent Gephardt (Sam Worthington) after the Horizon settlement is destroyed during an Apache raid, horse trader Hayes Ellison (Costner) and local Wyoming sex worker Marigold (Abbey Lee) evading pursuit from outlaws seeking revenge on Marigold, a wagon trail led by Matthew Van Weyden (Luke Wilson) traveling to Horizon for settlement, a group of bounty hunters hunting down Apache tribes, and the tribe of Indigenous people conflicted over the appropriate way to handle the threat of white settlers on their land. This description barely cracks the surface.Costner shows no hesitancy to bombard viewerswith all these characters and motivations.While the presentation of this sweeping tale is not messy, as each story is told without intercutting between other segments,it is information overload. The lack of connective tissue in the first installment undermines the “epic” quality of the film. Each segment on its own could potentially serve as a compelling individual film, butwhen multiple intricate storylines are thrown together, the direction loses cohesiveness.
Horizon’s hollow center would be forgivable if it had astronger immediate hook for the audience. There are stand-out scenes that demonstrate Costner’s chops for directing Western set pieces, such as the Horizon night raid and the stand-off between Hayes and Caleb Sykes (Jamie Campbell Bower). However, the fervor of these classical Western sequences is drowned out by the weight of the overarching plot. Engaging character moments, notablyFrances' flirtations with Lieutenant Gephardtand the artistic aspirations of a newlywed couple on the wagon trail, are refreshing,but they never push the narrative forward with any momentum.
Horizon’s fatal flaw is the decision to map out the entire framework of the saga without letting the viewer marinate with one character or setting. A 4-part epic Western saga is a daunting commitment for casual audiences, and Chapter 1 needed more urgency in its storytelling to make the viewer eager, rather than apprehensive, about sticking it out for three additional movies, presumably each roughly 3 hours in length. Presumably, he’ll have a more prominent presence down the line, butChapter 1 was hurt by Costner’s limited screen time.To guide the viewers across this daunting saga,a reliable and trustworthy movie starcan make the experience far more accessible. Not to mention, Costner’s Hayes Ellison is mysterious — a lone rider with inscrutable motivations and an anonymous personality.
Kevin Costner’s ‘Horizon’ Gets Lost in Problematic Western Tropes
For as groundbreaking as Costner’s business strategy and artistic boldness is, the text ofHorizon: Chapter 1is surprisingly familiar, and, in some cases, retrograde. Costner cribs from three masters of the Western genre:John Ford,Howard Hawks, andClint Eastwood.This demonstratesCostner’s deep-seated passion for the Western, although he doesn’t appear to beinterested in progressing the genre’s complicated history of Native American depiction.Costner’s heart is in the right place, butHorizoncan’t help but fall for insensitive tropes regarding the treatment of Indigenous people as savages. There’s an effort to humanize the group by giving them a dedicated story arc and extended dialogue scenes between the Native people, but they are served to further push the thematic elements of the film rather than being fleshed out.
However, the fracture among the tribe, amounting to Pionsenay (Owen Crow Shoe), forming his own tribe separate from the Chief, is a compelling dramatic arc that presents the tribe’s politics humanely and authentically. Because the story is introduced through the lens of white settlers, theaudience is trained to interpret the Indigenous people as outsiders.For Costner, he found his portrayal of Native Americans unapologetically authentic,saying toEntertainment Weekly, “I’m just so tired of everybody trying to be so delicate about things.” He expressed his disinterest in “spoon-feeding” the audience about the morality of Western expansion.
The closing moments ofHorizon: Chapter 1act as a teaser trailer for the upcoming Chapter 2 in August. Even after sitting through 3 hours and 1 minute of awkwardly paced and exhausting world-building,this teaser makes you excited about the next chapter, as it shows that the characters and stories will converge at the titular settlement.Despite the anticipation of the next chapter, one can’t help butfeel cheated that they merely sat through table-setting.Kevin Costner’s saga was thought to be the product of a maverick visionary, but the lack of closure and singularity in Chapter 1 evoked the frustration of the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s insistence on saving the best for the next installment. An episodic structure between a film series is not innately fraught. WithDune, for example, each film is in conversation with each other while possessing singularity in their narratives.PerhapsHorizonwill follow the same trajectoryas a TV show your friend recommends to you with the warning that it “gets good after the first few episodes.” Costner has had the odds staked against his favor before, but this time, the odds might just be insurmountable.
The Future of the ‘Horizon’ Saga and Kevin Costner’s Career
With a$38 million worldwide grossat the box office and a51% Rotten Tomatoes score,Horizon: An American Saga - Chapter 1did anything but conquer the cinematic landscape. Because of the film’s episodic structure and expansive runtime, Kevin Costner’s ambitious Western epic was destined to perform exceptionally well on streaming, and the film should see an increase in audience awareness upon landing on Netflix in January. The best-case scenario for Costner, whosesubsequent chapters are currently on ice, is thatHorizon’s appearance on Netflix inspires viewers who missed the film in theaters to get excited about Chapter 2, prompting Warner Bros. to announce a theatrical release for the sequels.In all likelihood, with the popularity of Costner’s former television vehicle,Yellowstone, and the curious decision Warner Bros has made with their theatrical distribution,Horizonwill find its way as a streaming miniseries. After all, New Line, the subsidiary distributor of the film,toldVarietythat they hope “to give audiences a greater opportunity to discover the first installment ofHorizonover the coming weeks, including on PVOD and Max.”
After fizzling out at the box office, Warner Bros. pulledHorizon: An American Saga - Chapter 2from its August 2024 release. As of January 2025, the film has no scheduled release date. However, the film, which picks up right where Chapter 1 left off, did see apremiere at the Venice Film Festivalin 2024, where Costner received a glowing three-minute standing ovation.Despite the festival’s red-carpet treatment of the actor-director,Horizon’s second chapter did not fare much better with the limited number of critics who watched it in Venice, as it currentlysits at 40% on Rotten Tomatoes. Costner was disappointed but not dispirited by the sudden postponement of Chapter 2. “It didn’t have overwhelming success,” Costner said of Chapter 1 at Venice. “I’ve had a lot of movies that way, that have stood the test of time,” he continued.
Kevin Costner Isn’t the Best Part of ‘Horizon’
One character’s storyline stands out from the pack.
The persistent Costner is currently doing whatever is necessary for the final two chapters, which have completed scripts written by himself andJon Baird, to finish production, remarking that Chapter 3 is “devastating.” Still, he understands that it will be an uphill battle.“I don’t know how I’m going to make (Chapter 3) right now,” he said. “But I’m going to make it,”Costner stated. TheField of Dreamsstar toldTodaythat portions of Chapter 3 have been filmed, and he hopes to complete the latter two installments in the spring of 2025.
Kevin Costner, who partiallyfinanced the saga himself, has a lot riding onHorizon. Not to mention, his impetus forshocking departing fromYellowstone, the hit Paramount series that revived the 69-year-old actor’s stardom, was to fulfill the dream of realizing this passion project on the big screen, the place that made him ahousehold name in the 1990s. The Taylor Sheridan show recently aired its series finale without its narrative patriarch, Costner’s John Dutton, who was killed off in the opening moments of the final season. In an age of constant flux about the viability of the theatrical industry for the non-IP/franchise variety,Costner walking away from a steady role on television to pursue his ambitious cinematic swing was highly encouraging.Unfortunately, moviegoing audiences might not be too interested in Westerns on the big screen, especially ones as bloated and episodic asHorizon.
Upon completing theHorizonsaga, Costner is set to star in atropical surf-set thriller,Headhunters, a genre film evoking his halcyon days as a movie star withNo Way OutandThe Bodyguard. Costner co-wrote the film with directorSteven Holleran, a cinematographer making his feature directorial debut. IfHorizonand hisYellowstonedeparture were indicators of where Costner is heading in his career, then audiences should expect him to continue taking bold swings andunconventional left turns. Like the archetypal Western hero, Costner follows his own path.
Horizon: An American Saga - Chapter 1is available to stream on Netflix in the U.S.
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Horizon: An American Saga - Chapter 1
Chronicles a multi-faceted, 15-year span of pre-and post-Civil War expansion and settlement of the American west.
