After debuting his Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 1 in Cannes last May, Kevin Costner is on the Lido today for the world premiere of the second installment in the Manifest Destiny epic. Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 2, directed by and starring Costner alongside Sienna Miller, Sam Worthington, Giovanni Ribisi, Isabelle Fuhrman, Luke Wilson and more, will screen out of competition at the Venice Film Festival this afternoon. Prior to that, Costner met with the press.
Costner wrote the, so far, two-part epic, with co-writer Jon Baird and also produces under his Territory Pictures banner. A third and fourth film are scripted and ready to shoot. The Oscar winner has a lot of skin in the game on this passion project. He previously told Deadline that he’s projected to pay $98 million himself for the first three films, and that financing the fourth will take it to over $100 million. Today, he was optimistic discussing the future.
The Venice Film Festival berth for Chapter 2 comes after New Line’s August 16 domestic release was delayed in the wake of sluggish box office performance for Chapter 1. “It didn’t have overwhelming success,” Costner allowed, but noted, “I’ve had a lot of movies that way that have stood the test of time.”
Still, Costner, who recently told Deadline Chapter 2 is expected to release before the end of the year, today did not seem fazed by the change-up. He said, “That was a studio decision to release it six weeks later. And it became a studio decision to not,” which resulted in falling back into his own plan. “I always wanted to come out with the movies about five, six months apart, and that was going to allow me to come to Venice… When it was six weeks, I wasn’t going to get to come here… But what happened is a miracle in life… My plan was always to bring it to Venice, and suddenly it has happened.”
Asked about the future of the series of movies, Costner explained, “If there’s anything that you expect from Part 2, you realize that 2 gets harder than 1. It’s hard to go west. Three is the same thing. It gets harder. But I will tell you this, Chapter 3 is devastating. It’s devastating because you begin to know all these people and life keeps coming at them, and you will see that.” He noted that he’s keen to keep moving forward with Chapter 3, “I have to hurry and not let the rock fall back downhill. I’ve gotta go put my hands on it again and start to push it up. It’s a rope that I cannot let go of.” His voice then faltered a bit as he added to applause, “I don’t know how I’m gonna make 3 right now, but I’m gonna make it.”
Asked why he chose this subject, Costner told the press corps, “I just love the journey of America, the promise of what America was… When the people who left Europe to cross the Atlantic Ocean, they saw something they just couldn’t possibly believe, a gigantic continent with not a single building. And the eyes of the world opened up, and they would come to America with a promise… That was about a 300, 400 year march across America from sea to shining sea, and it was done by your ancestors and by mine. And it was into a land where there was nothing, just the animals and the people who chose to live lightly on it, and the struggle that they didn’t want to give it up. So one promise was taking hold and another one was being lost.”
There’s “something about the West,” Costner mused. “It’s not a land in Disneyland, it’s a place where it was difficult, and it happened in inches. And I just wanted desperately to tell that story, and I found that the best way to tell that story was ultimately almost through the eyes of women. Women run right down the middle of every one of the storylines that are in Horizon. That’s the kind of movie that I wanted to bring to the world, and to even remind my own country that it was a struggle and it’s part of our history.”
He said, however, that Horizon “is not a message to my country; it’s a reminder to my country of how difficult it was that people made this journey… It’s not a message politically to anyone. You know, movies speak to us, and when the lights go out, they speak to our hearts individually. We can all watch the same thing in the dark, we’ll all live the same dream, but it will mean something different to all of us.”
Costner also reminisced about being in Venice 35 years ago for Silverado when “I only had one interview.” He ended up walking out of that interview as someone informed him that Fandango, in which he starred and which also released the same year, was playing in a nearby cinema. “I said, bullsh*t,” he recalled, then “walked into a theater that was full, people sitting in the aisles, and the movie was just ending. They turned when the lights came on, my name was announced. I had no idea that would happen, and the people of Venice clapped for the movie, because the movie was what mattered. And then they turned to me, looked at me, and I was never the same. And we walked out of that theater; the entire audience walked out onto the boulevard… and I thought, I’m making movies for the world. I may make American movies, but everything I do to them is about behavior, and I think behavior translates around the world.”
Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 1 is also screening in Venice. Coster has previously said that decision by the festival “shows not only their belief in how the two films work together but their support of a director’s vision.”
