2024-09-12 06:53:42
Kevin Costner admits that New Line Cinema delayed the sequel to his western Horizon: An American Saga, apparently due to the commercial failure of the first part. Nevertheless, the American actor and director does not let it discourage him. Last Saturday, he presented the sequel on the last day of the Venice festival.
The second part had its world premiere only a quarter of a year after Kevin Costner introduced the first at the May show in Cannes, France. “It wasn’t a smashing success,” he admits in retrospect, which is probably why studio New Line Cinema changed plans and didn’t send the second part to theaters right away in August.
It was because of this that Costner was now able to bring her to Venice. “What happened is almost a miracle. They don’t show anything in Venice that has already premiered. I always wanted to present the film here – and suddenly the opportunity appeared,” he says. The second film still does not have a set date when it will start showing in cinemas around the world.
Costner wrote, directed, produced and starred in the project. He is financing it partly out of his own pocket, because of this he has gone into debt, and the bank is guaranteed by his property by the sea in California.
Horizon: An American saga tells the story of the conquest of the Wild West in the late 19th century. The original plan was for Costner to split the story into four feature films, but he doesn’t have enough money for that yet. In addition, the first part with a budget of about 100 million dollars took only 36.1 million dollars worldwide and has an average score of 49 percent from critics on Rottentomatoes.com, for example.
“I don’t know how I’m going to shoot the next two parts, but I can do it,” said Costner in Venice, who already has the script for the third and fourth parts ready.
Kevin Costner went into debt for the first part of the western. | Photo: Reuters
According to the website Variety.com, he took the first shots for the third part in May this year, the final shutter is due to fall next year. “When I experience rejection, of course I’m disappointed at first. But when I get over it, my desire to keep going only grows,” adds the sixty-nine-year-old winner of two Oscars for the drama Dances with Wolves. “I have to hurry and not let the boulder fall to the bottom of the mountain. I have to roll up my sleeves and start pushing it up the hill again,” he compares, referring to the myth of Sisyphus.
According to him, the story is strong enough to stand the test of time. “A lot of my films were initially unsuccessful. In this case, the studio simply decided to release the second part six weeks after the first, and then decided to do it differently,” shrugs the actor. “Horizon is not a political message to my country. But it is a reminder of how difficult it was for the people who made this journey,” he adds.
The saga takes place over a span of 15 years, with the first volume covering the events between 1861 and 1865, when the US Civil War was raging and white settlers were bloody occupying lands inhabited by Indians.
The first reactions to the sequel are again mostly negative. According to The Hollywood Reporter magazine, the new movie suffers from the same problems as the first part. It spends too much time on exposition, often teeters on the edge of kitsch and switches chaotically between different story lines due to bad editing. The reviewer of the Variety.com server is not much more accommodating, according to whom Costner shows experience with old-school westerns in many places, but the result is a film as clumsy and confusing as the first part.
Kevin Costner has years of experience with the genre. In addition to the Oscar-winning Dances with Wolves from 1990, he acted in the cowgirls Silverado or Wyatt Earp. In recent years, he has drawn attention to himself as the star of the popular TV series Yellowstone, which ran for five seasons. The final episodes will premiere in the fall.
Video: Trailer from the first part of the Western series Horizont
The Czech cinema screened the first part of the film Horizont: The American Saga from the end of June. Photo: New Line Cinema. | Video: Vertigo International