Kevin Costner to Western fans: Get your streamin’ boots on (‘Horizon’ heads to Max, finally)
Despite a recent surge in popularity due to the hit Yellowstone, Kevin Costner’s posse of grown-up, Western-loving movie-goers failed to show up at cinemas this summer to support the first part of his (partially) self-financed epic “Horizon: An American Saga.” When the wheels got stuck in the mud, the Emmy-winner and two-time Oscar-winner paused the release date of “Chapter 2,” originally set for August 16, and left the future of the project (it was originally intended as four movies) in doubt.
But reinforcements are on the way. “Chapter 1” will make its way to streaming service Max next week. Friday, August 23, to be exact. That’s not a bad weekend, as it’s the one right before Labor Day; looking at my own calendar, I see it’s a rare one this summer where I didn’t make any plans. If I wasn’t one of the few who already saw the three-hour, stage-setting drama starring Costner, Sienna Miller, Sam Worthington, Luke Wilson, Jena Malone and Jon Beavers and Jamie Campbell Bower as those rootin’, tootin’ Sykes Brothers (hisssss!) I’d probably find time on a lazy Sunday to give this ol’ gal a whirl.
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“Horizon”’s second chapter will debut out of competition at the Venice Film Festival on September 7. Hopefully, by the time of the press conference, Costner will have some metrics from Max’s data set that suggest long-tail interest in the end product, in case he’s still in need of shaking a few coins out of the pockets of would-be investors to get this thing across the finish line. (It remains a little vague just where Costner is in production on the back half of the saga, let alone post-production.)
As one who actually did watch “Chapter One,” I’ll say that it was far from terrible—it was just like watching an enormous pilot episode. Most of the three-hour run time was spent introducing the enormous sweep of characters (Costner himself doesn’t show up for an hour) and putting them on the chessboard. The movie even ends with a montage that feels an awful lot like “tune in next week” messaging.
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