Kevin Costner presented “Horizon” at Cannes 2024, the first part of a four-film western epic. But this saga about the birth of the west could ultimately go much further…
“I shot three days of the third film, and I put everything on hold to come to Cannes”explained Kevin Costner at a Cannes press conference a few days ago. “It was very important for me to go to a place [comme Cannes] where films are received with openness. As soon as I leave, I’ll resume filming for as long as my budget allows…”
A project that dates back to 1988
The actor-director-writer-producer is leading the most ambitious artistic project of his career with the epic western Horizon. A story that he has been carrying since 1988 (before Dances with Wolves, therefore) and which has evolved from a minimalist approach around two characters to a vast fresco in the American West, while several destinies intersect around a emerging city called Horizon.
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In 2003, when he had just directed his third feature film Open Range, the Horizon project had almost come to fruition with Disney, as explained by our colleagues at GQ. A small budget of 5 million dollars will derail the project, Kevin Costner refusing to compromise his vision. It would be another eleven years before the idea was relaunched, with Kevin Costner and screenwriter Jon Baird at the pen. And above all, Kevin Costner on production, since he has injected nearly 38 million of his personal money into the financing to date.
In 1991, Dances with Wolves was my first cowboy film: 33 years later, I was able to talk about westerns with Kevin Costner in Cannes
The result ? An unprecedented epic of four feature films, an unprecedented crossover between the big screen and the premium television series. “This story is not finished after the first film”Kevin Costner explains to us when we meet him in Cannes on the sidelines of the presentation of the feature film out of competition. “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”.
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Kevin Costner and the “Horizon” team at the top of the Cannes steps
“Kevin was so clear about how he wanted this film to be presented”adds her actress Isabelle Fuhrman, who plays a pioneer embarked in a convoy of settlers towards Horizon. “He wanted to do something different with this kind of western, he really wanted to do something that was very big, very expansive and very epic, but also that really brought you closer to what these people were experiencing while they were colonizing the ‘West”.
Horizon 2, 3, 4… 5, 6, 7, 8?
“With the first film, it sets up the next three chapters”adds Luke Wilson, also a settler in this adventure. “What I love and admire about Kevin is that he takes his time telling the story and setting up each story. You wonder if they’re all going to intersect…and we don’t know. still not because we haven’t read the third scenario yet I hope everyone will meet again at the end…”
Metropolitan FilmExport
“These people are just beginning their journey, which is difficult, and they are just learning,” underlines Kevin Costner. “Some people in the West were lucky. Others were unlucky. The violence missed someone, and the violence affected others. Random. We don’t So I don’t know who will come out of this in the story…”
Kevin Costner moved to tears at Cannes 2024, his western “Horizon” divides: a major Dune-style epic or prologue to a television series?
In this uncertainty specific to the wild west, the promise of opportunities but also of dangers, even the actors do not know the destiny of their character. “We heard that people had read the third film and we wondered what it was like”having fun Luke Wilson. “Am I coming back in the third? Am I alive? But that’s how Horizon is designed. We’re finding out as we go along”.
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Kevin Costner and Sienna Miller accomplices during the Cannes photocall
A discovery that could extend beyond four films according to Sienna Miller, who is one of the few people to have had access to the four scenarios. To the point of initially thinking that Horizon was part of the series. “I think you will really begin to understand the world that is being built and created”she explains to us. “From a dirt tent encampment, we’ll move to a village, then a town. Kevin said he had a five, a six, a seven, an eight in mind! So it could go on and on “.
“I need someone who wants to go west”
Horizon is he the Avatar of Kevin Costner and the plains of the far-west its Pandora? While waiting to plan further, the star took advantage of her trip to Cannes to continue her search for financing. “I toured all the yachts in the port”he joked at a press conference. “I’m going to do them no matter what, but they’re not funded yet. (…) I need someone who is impulsive, emotional, who has money and who wants to go towards the ‘west”.
Notice to financiers therefore. The reception given to Horizon in Cannes could convince them. Just like the sincere tears of Kevin Costner overwhelmed by emotion in front of the standing ovation from the Grand Théâtre Lumière at the end of the screening. Certainly one of the very beautiful moments of this 77th Cannes Film Festival.
“Horizon: an American saga Chapter 1” will be released on July 3 in France, “Horizon: an American saga Chapter 2” is expected on September 11 in our cinemas.