It’s the project of a lifetime. After a career punctuated by success (The Untouchables, The End of the Dream, Robin Hood, Bodyguard) and chess (Waterworld, Postman), critical recognitions (JFK, the Oscar triumph of Dancing with the wolves, A perfect world) punctuated by a long crossing of the desert and unexpected rebirths (the successful series Yellowtone where he is an actor and producer), the iconic Kevin Costner has decided that no more obstacles will stand in his way to realizing his dreams as an artist.
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An experienced director beyond his star status, Costner loves no other genre as much as the western: beyond the phenomenon Dancing with the wolveshis first feature as a director, was released twenty years ago Open Range, his second film as a filmmaker and another very fine specimen of the genre. It is a film just as melancholic but even more ambitious that the actor now wishes to deliver. Because it will be in four parts, in fact exceeding the six hours of great spectacle. And above all, it is entirely self-funded!
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Kevin Costner put in his own money, in other words tens of millions of dollars, to bring about Horizon: an American saga, the name of this new trilogy of westerns, the first opus of which should invade our theaters on June 26. A true “American saga”, to paraphrase the French subtitle of this new series of promising films. It’s quite simply the craziest bet of his career…
Why does Kevin Costner rely so much on this saga?
If this project means so much to Kevin Costner, it’s because he invested a lot in it. Literally. In the production, Costner injected nearly 38 million dollars of his personal money, report our colleagues atAllocinatedwhich compare squarely Horizon to the saga… Avatar by James Cameron, other “project of a lifetime” if there is one. And Kevin Costner has been trying to launch this filming since 2003…
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It was by following in the footsteps of a very great filmmaker, Francis Ford Coppola, that Kevin Costner thought up the not necessarily obvious financing of Horizon. Indeed, Coppola in unison resolved to exercise self-financing in order to finally be able to give life to Megalopolis, a pharaonic project that he had in mind for decades – and which was finally presented at the last Cannes Film Festival. Edition in which the very first part of the saga imagined by Kevin Costner was also screened! No coincidence.
“It’s not a bank robbery. It’s not a framed plot. It’s a journey. And I hope it’s interesting. I hope you feel like you’re seeing real people make real decisions in a country that was open, when there was nothing”, wanted to let the actor know at a conference in Cannes. The magazine First reports his words: “When I finish the fourth film in the Horizon saga, I will have exceeded the 100 million budget mark!” Suffice to say that the stakes are high.
To savor Horizon in its clearest coherence, we would obviously have to wait for the release of the four opuses. And take your courage tomorrow to face a session which should total… ten hours of footage. But it would be a bad choice not to give the necessary strength to a director who claims to be one of the greatest and demonstrates it with strong ambition. We can’t wait to see this megalomaniacal project.
