Chapter 1 of the actor and director’s latest love letter to the West arrives in cinemas on June 28.
The Big Picture
- Kevin Costner’s passion project
Horizon
is shaping up to be an epic Western series, with grand ambitions and practical challenges. - Costner’s dedication to making
Horizon
a reality is evident in his hands-on approach, from financing to braving extreme weather conditions. - With
Horizon
set to be bigger than
Dances with Wolves
, Costner stands to top his own career milestone with this expansive project.
Kevin Costner has long teased that his upcoming film series Horizon was about as deep to him as a passion project could run, so the reports coming from Cannes that hail the movie as a Western epic in the biggest sense of the word completely check out. The actor, director, and co-writer not only poured his time, vision, and ambition into the film series, but he also financed a large part of it, ensuring his dream would become as close to what he envisioned as possible. During a conversation with Collider’s Steve Weintraub before the film’s Cannesworld premiere, Costner shared how, in making Horizon a reality, not only did the practical effects need to be as big and bold as possible but that his cast and crew needed to be prepared for a challenge like many of them had never faced on the set of a film before.
He explained what it was like filmin a sequence with real fire:
“It’s hard. It started getting cold right around then. It hadn’t been over 100, and when we were shooting
that scene the water was freezing
. We had to have a tank out there in case there was a fucking fire, but the water froze in the tank so we couldn’t put out any fire. So, it was unlikely we were gonna burn anything down to begin with. But when you’re out there in the real [world], we’re making a six-hour documentary of the making of these four movies, and we are in complete windstorms.
We’re in monsoons out there trying to make a movie.
We’re out there with our picks trying to clear the snow in order to do a scene because there’s no snow. I shot
Dances with Wolves
in 106 days; we shot this movie in 52. It’s arguably bigger than
Dances
.”
From ‘Dances with Wolves’ To ‘Horizon’ – Kevin Costner Can’t Get Enough Of The Wild West
It’s fair to say when it was announced that Costner’s next huge project, to follow his long-running appearance on Taylor Sheridan’s beloved TV series Yellowstone, would be a Western film franchise, no one was exactly clutching their pearls. The man has an affinity with the days of cowboys, outlaws, and the battle over the West, as can be seen in the projects that have dotted his decades-long career. Of course, it also drummed up memories for many of us of the actor’s first foray into filmmaking through 1990’s Dances with Wolves.
Returning to that part of the country’s history is a great move on Costner’s part for a myriad of reasons that reach much further than his love for the subject. Dances with Wolves still holds the bragging rights of being the creative’s biggest project of his career, with an impressive box office haul and numerous wins at the Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director. Essentially, making Horizonas massive as it can only better Costner’s chances of not only seeing his baby grow from an idea to a cinematic goliath but also giving him a good shot at topping the biggest project of his career more than three decades later.
Part one of Horizon arrives in cinemas on June 28 with part two riding into theaters on August 16. Learn everything there is to know about Costner’s latest project here in our all-encompassing guide.
Horizon: An American Saga
Chronicles a multi-faceted, 15-year span of pre-and post-Civil War expansion and settlement of the American west.
- Release Date
- June 28, 2024
- Director
- Kevin Costner
- Cast
- Kevin Costner , Sienna Miller , Michael Angarano , Jena Malone
- Main Genre
- Western
- Writers
- Jon Baird
This article was originally published on collider.com