There’s someone new on the horizon…and that someone is Thomas Haden Church. Church has signed on to co-star in Kevin Costner’s latest, Horizon.
News on the cast of Costner’s long-awaited western has been coming in quite steadily. Earlier this month, with Sienna Miller, Sam Worthington and Luke Wilson all inked contracts before Thomas Haden Church.
Horizon will be Kevin Costner’s fourth film as director, following 1990’s Dances with Wolves, 1997’s The Postman and 2003’s Open Range. Costner, it seems, is taking that number quite literally. For his latest endeavor, Costner wants to go epic, churning out “four different movies.”
“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…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.”
And considering the plot and reported 220-day shooting schedule, one can see how. Horizon is about the “multi-faceted, 15-year span of pre- and post-Civil War expansion and settlement of the American West. Experienced through the eyes of many, the epic journey is fraught with peril and intrigue from the constant onslaught of natural elements to the interactions with the Indigenous peoples who lived on the land and the determination and at many times ruthlessness of those who sought to settle it.”
Kevin Costner sure loves him some baseball, but he’s also been involved with several westerns, dating back to 1985’s Silverado. His directorial debut, Dances with Wolves, won seven Academy Awards (sorry, Marty!). His current outing, Yellowstone, is a welcome return to the genre. In 2019, Kevin Costner was inducted into the Hall of Great Western Performers.
Thomas Haden Church previously earned an Emmy for the 2006 western miniseries Broken Trail.