Kevin Costner’s “Horizon: An American Saga — Chapter 1” will be available on Max in two days. The perceived goal would be to grow an audience on streaming so that the already-shot ‘Chapter 2’ can be released theatrically in the very near future.
In May, Costner told me at Cannes that he’d shot nine days’ worth of footage for ‘Chapter 3’ and then had to halt production due to lack of funds. The goal was to shoot the rest of the film this summer, but those plans failed. Then word came out he was looking at a fall shoot. That clearly won’t be happening either.
Costner has now widened the goal posts and is telling NBC that the plan is to shoot Chapters 3 and 4 back-to-back next Spring. I wish him the best of luck and really hope it happens. No matter how mixed I was on the first Chapter, we deserve to see the full and completed version of this story, and I’m already hearing that the second one — set to premiere at Venice in September— is superior to Chapter 1.
The plan is, I’ve already shot a little bit of the third. And to perhaps shoot them back to back next spring […] I love the journey of this thing. It’s been the hardest thing I’ve ever done, but I love this movie. I love the second one — and the third one’s even harder than the first two, and the fourth one completes the story.
There is currently no release date for ‘Horizon 2,’ which was originally supposed to come out in August but was pulled from the schedule by Warner Bros after the first instalment failed to lure audiences. Streamers like Netflix and Amazon have made offers to acquire the films, but it doesn’t sound like Costner is budging. He wants theatrical rollouts.