Kevin Costner's passion project,
Horizon: An American Saga , struggled in it's opening weekend. The box office is a complicated beast in today's modern age of media consumption. Movie makers are struggling to crack the code for getting people to flock to theaters to see films on their opening weekend. What used to be a traditional night out on the town has instead turned into, "What can we find to watch on all of the streaming services we subscribe to?" That's led some studios to send movies that would have normally been sent to theaters a decade ago straight to streaming, where consumers can watch their latest creation at no extra cost. Though that's a nice luxury to have sometimes, it's also really hurt the potential for movies releasing in theaters, among other things. Besides last year's organic "Barbenheimer" phenomenon, there's not a lot that can drive movie fans to go see films on the big screen. Thus, movies that are being released as of late are putting a lot of pressure on how a film performs on its opening weekend. Back in the day, a film would stay in theaters for weeks - or even months - before it finally bowed out. Now, a new movie might stay for a mere two weeks before it's offered up in a digital format for people to enjoy in the comfort of their home. It can be a real knee-jerk reaction when a movie doesn't do all that well in its opening weekend, but its always nice to see a movie do well despite all of the obstacles. Unfortunately for Kevin Costner, his newest movie
Horizon: An American Saga (which is technically Chapter One of a four part movie event) is not one of those movies, as it came way under box office expectations. There are some reports that the first installment cost around $100 million to make, and $30 million to market. It made $11 million dollars this past weekend at the box office: https://twitter.com/moviefone/status/1807851672640934247 Costner himself has even
allegedly put forth around $38 million of his own money so far, and even apparently mortgaged some of his land to help finance the project. Needless to say, it was an underwhelming start to the
Horizon saga... at least when it comes to a return on investment. Might not bode well for financing the rest of it... Even though it didn't do all that well, Kevin Costner still feels proud and isn't getting rattled by the early returns (or lack thereof). The 69-year-old actor and director spoke to
Variety and said it's not always about how a movie does in its first three days:
"I’ve lived with movies and what happens to them on their opening weekend... I’m really happy that ‘Horizon’ looks like what it’s supposed to look like, and that’s the way it’ll look the rest of its life. And that’s really important to me in this process." Costner has always spoke on how passionate he is about movies, and has never really once mentioned money as a motivation for his work. The only issue is that without a lot of success, it may be difficult, or at least increasingly challenging, to finish out this "four part movie event." He even conceded that he would love for it to have had a bigger weekend, but at the end of the day, is really happy with how the first chapter turned out:
"Would I love that it would be highly, highly successful? Of course, I’d like that. My ego would like that; everyone would like that. But I am happiest that the movie that you and I are talking about looks the way I want it to look." With that tone, it sounds like Kevin Costner will go full steam ahead with the rest of his four-part movie event. The second installment of
Horizon: An American Saga releases August 16th, and it's been reported that "Chapter 3" is currently filming. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X5yOSu4R2ts&pp=ygUPaG9yaXpvbiB0cmFpbGVy
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