Upcoming Horizon Project Is Weirdly More Exciting Than Any Of Kevin Costner's Planned Sequels

There’s a new project on the way in the Horizon: An American Saga franchise, and it frankly sounds a lot more exciting than any of Kevin Costner’s planned sequels. Back in June, Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 1 was released in theaters to very little fanfare. Horizon received mixed reviews from critics, earning an evenly polarized 51% “rotten” critics’ score and a slightly warmer 70% “fresh” audience score on Rotten Tomatoes. It was a box office bomb, grossing just $31,497,309 worldwide on a budget of $50 million (via The Numbers).




Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 1 is the first of four planned Horizon movies. Costner has already shot and completed Chapter 2, but after the box office failure of Chapter 1, Chapter 2 has been indefinitely shelved by Warner Bros. It’s unclear when that movie will see the light of day, and even less clear if Chapters 3 and 4 will ever get made. But now, there’s an even more exciting Horizon movie in the works: a making-of documentary chronicling how Costner got the franchise off the ground.


The Upcoming Horizon Documentary Tells The Movie’s Most Interesting Story: How Kevin Costner Made It

The Making Of Horizon Is A Better Story Than Horizon Itself


While it’s doing some interesting things within the western genre, Horizon: An American Saga is basically just a hodgepodge of various western tropes and clichés collected into one giant narrative. It’s visually stunning and impressively ambitious, but it’s not a particularly compelling story. The story of how it got made, on the other hand, is much more unique and interesting, so this new making-of documentary is a lot more exciting than Chapters 2, 3, and 4.

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Costner went into his own pocket to help make up Horizon’s $50 million budget. That alone makes the production of this movie a fascinating story. Costner went outside the studio system to make a big-budget movie with his own money; he felt so passionately about his vision for this four-part epic that he put his own cash on the line. It’s a wild Hollywood underdog story, and if the making-of doc captures that, it’ll make for a fascinating watch.


The Horizon Documentary Could Drive Demand To Finish Kevin Costner’s Western Franchise

If It Does Really Well, It Could Reinvigorate Interest In The Horizon Saga

Kevin Costner as Hayes Ellison on horseback in Horizon An American Saga Chapter 1

If Horizon’s making-of doc does really well — and this is a very big “if” — then it could reinvigorate interest in the franchise and actually get it back on track. If audiences see this documentary and see how passionate Costner is about finishing Horizon: An American Saga, then it could encourage more people to finally check out Chapter 1 and see the first part of that vision. If the streaming numbers are high enough, maybe this series will be completed after all.

Horizon: An American Saga Poster

Horizon: An American Saga

“Horizon: An American Saga” is a series of epic Western films directed, produced, and co-written by Kevin Costner. The saga spans pre- and post-Civil War America, detailing the exploration and settlement of the American West over 15 years, and follows multiple storylines of fictional characters as they navigate the challenges and opportunities of this tumultuous period.