Horizon: Kevin Costner plans to split his epic Western into four movies

It’s been almost twenty years since Kevin Costner last directed a movie, but he’s gearing up to step behind the camera this summer for a brand-new Western epic, Horizon.

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.” Even the sprawling nature of the story, it should come as no surprise that Kevin Costner wants to supersize the experience. It’s not clear if the project will be seen in theaters, streaming, or both, but Kevin Costner told Variety that the Western was originally sold as an “event television movie.“

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.“

Kevin Costner will start shooting Horizon by late August with a shooting schedule of 220 days. The Western will be Kevin Costner’s first time directing a movie since Open Range all the way back in 2003. He also directed The Postman and Dances with Wolves, the latter of which earned him an Academy Award for Best Director. Costner is currently shooting the fifth season of Yellowstone for Paramount+.