Horizon: Jena Malone, Alejandro Edda, Tatanka Means, & Michael Rooker added to Costner’s Western epic

We’re going to need more ten-gallon hats, folks! Jena Malone (The Neon Demon, Contact, The Hunger Games: Mockingjay), Alejandro Edda (American Made, The Forever Purge), Tatanka Means (Killers of the Flower Moon, Banshee), and Michael Rooker (Slither, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2) are joining the cast of Kevin Costner’s Western epic Horizon. They join an ensemble cast that includes Sienna Miller, Sam Worthington, Jamie Campbell Bower, Luke Wilson, and Thomas Haden Church.

Kevin Costner’s Horizon will “span 15 years in the settlement of America’s Western frontier, and focus on both the settlers as well as the Indigenous groups that first occupied the land.” Horizon will be Kevin Costner’s first time directing a movie since Open Range in 2003. He also directed The Postman and Dances with Wolves, the latter of which earned him an Academy Award for Best Director.

Costner plans to split Horizon up into four movies. Initially, Costner sold the idea as an “event television movie,” but that is no longer the case. While speaking with Variety in June, Costner detailed his plans for Horizon’s release by saying, “I’m happiest because at one point in TV — where you can get your largest audience — they’re going to get to see it the way I intended it to be seen. It will eventually be cut up into [hour-long episodes] or 42 minutes — however TV works. But their first viewing of it will be as four 2-hour and 45-minute movies. And every three months, one will come out. If you’re interested in those characters, the hope is that you’ll really want to watch the next one, but it won’t be in hour segments.

“It’s a really beautiful story; it’s a hard story,” Costner added. “It really involves a lot of women, to be honest. There are a lot of men in it, too, but the women are really strong in ‘Horizon.’ It’s just them trying to get by every day in a world that was impossibly tough. They were often [dragged] out to these places because that’s where the men wanted to go; women were following their men. They didn’t ask to be in these territories that were unsettled and dangerous, and life wasn’t easy. I’ve chosen to make sure that was really obvious, that that wasn’t easy, and how vulnerable people were. “

Release plans for Horizon remain unclear at this time. For now, the project could go to theaters, streaming platforms, or both.

How would you like to experience Kevin Costner’s Horizon? Do you think your television can handle the scope and scale of this ambitious project? Or is this a Top Gun: Maverick situation, where the only way to get the full impact is on a big screen? Let us know in the comments section.