What's Going On With Kevin Costner's Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 2?

Being a pioneer is a long, tough road. That's the theme of Kevin Costner's "Horizon: An American Saga" both on and off the silver screen, as the filmmaker's epic passion project concerning an ensemble of characters in the Old West struggling over a piece of untamed land continues to run into all sorts of obstacles in the real world. Chief among those obstacles is the question of any sort of release: after "Horizon: An American Saga — Chapter 1" was released in theaters on June 28th of 2024, it struggled to even get close to making its $50 million budget back at the box office, earning just $38.7 million. That figure, combined with the film's tepid critical reception, caused New Line Cinema and Warner Bros. to revamp its original plan to release "Chapter 2" of the saga on August 16th of last year, postponing the release seemingly indefinitely. This fate seems to be a current (and troubling) trend, as a number of completed films have been shelved recently, with Warner Bros. being home to a couple of the most high-profile examples.

Yet "Horizon" is a unique case — it's not being treated as a pure tax write-off as "Coyote vs. Acme" seems to be, nor has it lost the faith of its makers, like the Pharrell Williams/Michel Gondry collaboration "Golden" apparently has. As proof that "Horizon" isn't finished yet, "Chapter 2" recently had a screening at the 40th Santa Barbara International Film Festival on February 7th, a full five months following its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival in September of last year. The film is completed, Costner believes in it, and there's certainly some interest from fans of his as well as those discovering "Chapter 1" on home media to see what happens next. If "Chapter 2" were the only missing piece, it'd be easy to say that New Line should just release the film and be done with it. The issue compounds, however, upon realizing that there are two more chapters of "Horizon" to follow, and these are films that are far from being completed.

Inspired by both the long-form epics of '50s and '60s Hollywood and the current-day trend of multi-part films, "Horizon" finds itself in a tight spot that's as pioneering as it is difficult to solve. The promise of "Horizon" is one that's genuinely inspiring: a multi-part saga telling a single, sprawling, original story that attempts to capture as many facets of life in the Old West as never before explored. The problem is that no one, save Costner and perhaps his collaborators, knows exactly where "Horizon" may be going, which makes it a pretty tough sell to current-day movie audiences. To wit: this isn't an adaptation of a novel or any other pre-existing material, so there is no fanbase with an appetite for seeing characters or storylines they already know and love brought to the big screen. Even trickier is the fact that these films comprise one massive story; these aren't installments or sequels in the traditional sense, where each movie would have a single close-ended narrative that leaves room for further adventures.

It would be one thing if Costner, who financed the majority of the first two films with his own money, had all four chapters completed and could show them to select audiences (not to mention studio executives), thereby giving some indication of the full shape of this saga. Right now, "Horizon" feels like it's all sizzle, no steak; the montage of scenes from "Chapter 2" seen at the close of "Chapter 1" is undeniably rousing, and apparently, Costner has included a similar montage at the close of "Chapter 2" featuring glimpses of future chapters. Yet the teasing of more to come only works when the material has got a firm foothold in the popular culture, and at this point in time, "Horizon" is too far on the fringes to get people excited about the future when things are still this uncertain.

The fact that "Horizon — Chapter 2" is such a hard sell and a clear financial gamble is tough to swallow, simply because the film sounds well worth watching. That's true in general, as it's great to get more original movies made for adults and new Westerns, full stop. But it also seems to be true in a specific sense, if the reports from folks who got to attend the February 7th screening are anything to go by. While explaining his inspiration for the saga, Costner gave a movie summation of the series' themes (as seen in CBR, via Variety):

"The people who traveled across the ocean to America were in search of a dream. If you were mean enough and tough enough, you could make it yours. And that was a nightmare for the people who had been here for 15,000 years. And this land was contested. It was a bad ending for the Native Americans who existed here and had found some equilibrium. But I'm not embarrassed about that, I'm just disturbed we don't know more about it."

Later, during a post-film Q&A, Costner talked about "Horizon," and "Chapter 2" in particular, had a female-centric focus:

"I was always bothered that we didn't have more women in our Westerns, because there was no West without women. [...] When we were creating the story, we could not keep women out of it. It just was easier with them in it."

Costner also reaffirmed his passion for the project, speaking about how he began to work on it way back in 1988 and how he decided then that he would persevere even though "it didn't seem like anybody liked it too much." Declaring how the screening event made him "feel like a giant," it seems Costner's belief in "Horizon" has hardly wavered despite recent events. As of this writing, "Chapter 3" is still technically in development, and while a domestic release for "Chapter 2" is still uncertain, the film is set to be theatrically released in Germany on April 3. Perhaps the thing that could save "Horizon" is as old-fashioned as its setting: perseverance, grit, and word of mouth. Who knows what the complete saga will look like when (and not if) it gets finished, but I, for one, can't wait to find out.