He’s getting back in the saddle.
Kevin Costner’s passion project, the epic Western movie “Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 1,” has been a disaster at the box office – but it’s still getting a premiere date on Max, hitting the streamer on Friday, Aug. 23.
The former “Yellowstone” star, 69, wrote, directed and starred in the first installment of his new Western film series, which flopped in theaters when it premiered in June.
The movie made only $32 million on a $100 million budget. Costner reportedly spent $38 million of his own money on the film.
“I’ve mortgaged 10 acres on the water in Santa Barbara where I was going to build my last house,” Costner told Deadline in May 2023.
“It has thrown my accountant into a f—king conniption fit. But it’s my life, and I believe in the idea and the story.”
The movie was planned to be four installments, but its future is up in the air, as the US release of “Horizon: An American Saga — Chapter Two” has been scrapped from the August schedule in the US amid its box office bomb.
However, it’s still getting a world premiere at the Venice Film Festival on September 7.
The movie is a multi-chapter epic Western co-starring Sienna Miller, Sam Worthington, Jena Malone and Danny Huston.
The first chapter got critically panned.
A review for the BBC noted that a movie “needs to have a plot, a bit of credible characterization, and a structure that preferably includes a beginning, middle and end. ‘Horizon’ doesn’t have any of those.”
Variety slammed Costner’s film as “meandering” and said it “seldom seems to aim in a clear direction,” while IndieWire said, “These aren’t characters so much as the spokes of a plot in human form, each of their storylines moving as if being pulled by horses across the entire span of the American West.”
The Post movie critic Johnny Oleksinski wrote, “It’s hard to believe Costner left ‘Yellowstone‘ to make such an embarrassing, poorly told mess … There are more than 20 named roles scattered all over the place…and viewers strain to care much for any of them, so bland and animatronic they all are.”
Costner talked about the movie’s underwhelming performance in an interview with E! News published Saturday.
“I’ve faced life with people being dismissive of me, he said. “But they can’t be dismissive of ‘Horizon,’ because now it’s out of their hands.”
“And they might point to the finish line—well, this is what it did at the box office—but I know that this movie is going to play for the next 50 years,” Costner added.
The Oscar winner and father of seven went on, “There’s a moment in time where you want [your children] to see this movie. To understand that this is what their [ancestors] went through. It’s not just a western, it’s a history of migration and what they had to do to survive. And I’m really proud of it.”
