Waterworld, Dances with Wolves, Yellowstone, you name it, Kevin Costner has a remarkable résumé. Across his pair of Oscars, trio of Golden Globes, and lone Emmy, the storied artist has proven to be just as deft in front of the camera as he is behind it, and with his 70th birthday just around the corner, he’s still been keeping as busy as ever.
It’s unfortunate, then, that Horizon: An American Saga — Costner’s cinematic, serialized passion project that’s had a rough go of things for decades — is facing an uncertain future following Chapter 1‘s dismal performance at the box office this past summer. Now its sturdy clamber on the streaming charts seems to be its last saving grace.
Per FlixPatrol, Horizon: An American Saga — Chapter 1 has found itself in fourth place on the worldwide Max film rankings, beating out the likes of Ridley Scott’s Gladiator (whose sequel, Gladiator II, opens this weekend) in seventh place, and the Blake Lively-led box office boon It Ends with Us in ninth place.
The film stars Costner himself as Hayes Ellison, one of a variety of characters navigating the mid-1800s Midwestern United States while the Civil War echoes in the background and the foreground. Throughout, characters from all walks of life make a beeline for Horizon, a settlement town that promises prosperity and sanctuary.
Costner first tried getting Horizon made in 1988, back when it was just a single film, and after plans fell through with Disney, the scripts went on the back burner until 2012, when they were rewritten as a four film series. A decade later, production began.
It’s difficult to pinpoint how Horizon could have better, because there’s hardly a narrative thesis that’s present enough to unpack. Keeping track of the myriad of storylines is a harsh task as is, but they’re all so aggravatingly incomprehensible and dramatically contrived, that a hard task turns into an impossible one.
Chapter 2 was originally set to hit cinemas in August, but after Chapter 1 hauled in a measly $38.2 million against a $50 million budget, the second film was removed from the Warner Bros. release slate and has not been added back since. By all appearances, this hasn’t stopped the development of Chapter 3 or Chapter 4, so Horizon has found itself in one of the most peculiar limbos in recent cinematic memory.
Perhaps this is best characterized as one of the great tragedies of independent cinema. Costner poured his heart, body, and bank account into these films, and there’s certainly something to be said — however often it gets cynically spun — about the value of original storytelling in the Hollywood landscape. But with Horizon being so dire on both a financial and artistic front, film execs might feel newly vindicated in their addiction to unchallenging movies and insulting the intelligence of their audiences, and that’s the last thing we need right now.
