The Yellowstone star is filming his dream project Horizon as four separate “event” movies.
Those of you who have been hankering for Kevin Costner to make another western will soon have your wish fulfilled. Four times.
Last January, the Oscar-winning director of Dances With Wolves and Emmy-winning star of Hatfields & McCoys announced that, once he wraps filming for the upcoming Season 5 of Yellowstone, he will turn his attention to Horizon, his long-in-development passion project. At the time, we assumed that it would be a single feature film, his first in the genre since the acclaimed Open Range. On Tuesday, however, the showbiz trade website Variety reported in an exclusive interview with Costner that Horizon — now being sold as “an event television movie” — will consist of four different movies premiering three months apart.
“They’re all different films that all connect, so you’re watching a saga of these storylines that are happening,” Costner told Variety.
“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.”
What’s it all about? As Costner told the showbiz website Deadline in January: “America’s expansion into the West was one that was fraught with peril and intrigue from the 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. Horizon tells the story of that journey in an honest and forthcoming way, highlighting the points of view and consequences of the characters life and death decisions.”
Currently scheduled to start filming in August, Horizon will be presented as four two-hour and 45-minute films. Initially, at least.
“I’m happiest because at one point in TV — where you can get your largest audience — they’re going to get to see it the way I intended it to be seen,” Costner told Variety. “It will eventually be cut up into [hour-long episodes] or 42 minutes — however TV works. But their first viewing of it will be as four two-hour and 45-minute movies. And every three months, one will come out. If you’re interested in those characters, the hope is that you’ll really want to watch the next one, but it won’t be in hour segments.”
But what about Yellowstone, which will have its Season 5 premiere Nov. 13? Rest assured, Costner isn’t departing the phenomenally popular Paramount Network series anytime soon. “I'll go till it doesn’t feel like we're interesting,” he told Entertainment Tonight this week, “and right now we have our foot on the gas and that feels OK to me.”
