The second installment of Kevin Costner’s Horizon film series will have a lavish premiere after its theatrical release was indefinitely postponed.
Horizon: An American Saga — Chapter 2 will debut out of competition at the Venice International Film Festival on Saturday, September 7. Chapter 1, which hit theaters in June, will also screen at the festival that same day.
Chapter 2 was originally scheduled to premiere in theaters on Friday, August 16, but distributor New Line Cinema canceled the release after Chapter 1 debuted to lukewarm reviews and dismal box-office numbers. Chapter 1, which had a budget of $50 million, earned just $11 million in its opening weekend.
Costner, 69, has been trying to produce Horizon for more than 30 years, and he eventually plans to release four films with a runtime totaling 12 hours. Production on Chapter 3 began earlier this year.
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The films tell the story of a fictional town in the American West called Horizon and spans over a decade. The sprawling cast includes Sam Worthington, Sienna Miller, Danny Huston, Luke Wilson, Jena Malone, Jamie Campbell Bower, Giovanni Ribisi and Costner himself.
Earlier this year, Costner told GQ that he put $38 million of his own money into the Horizon saga.
“It’s kind of an independent movie,” he explained. “My wife and I knew we were going to finance it. We just mortgaged a property, a beachfront property in Santa Barbara. Ten acres. I said, ‘It’s a good deal.’ And she said, ‘Yeah, one more and we’re out of business.’”
Costner and his aforementioned wife, Christine Baumgartner, ultimately called it quits in May 2023 while he was still in production on Chapter 2. The former couple finalized their divorce in February.
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Horizon was also rumored to be the reason that Costner left Yellowstone, the Paramount Network drama that he has starred in since 2018. The Oscar winner has since claimed that the scheduling conflicts were not his fault.
“We very rarely started when we said we would and we didn’t finish when we said we would,” he alleged to GQ in May. “And I was OK with that. I really was. I was OK with it, but it wasn’t a trend that could continue for me. … And their big plan was to suddenly do eight [episodes] now and then in the fall do eight more. I said, ‘I have a contract to do Horizon, and I have people and money.’ I think there was a belief that I couldn’t get it mounted, but I didn’t really care what anybody believed.”
Sans Costner, the second half of Yellowstone’s final season is set to premiere on Paramount Network November 10.
