‘Yellowstone’ Is Not the Only Western Kevin Costner Has on the ‘Horizon’
Yellowstone star Kevin Costner (John Dutton) has been busy filming season 5 in Montana with the rest of the cast. But Taylor Sheridan’s neo-western isn’t the only project that Costner has on his schedule this year. The two-time Oscar winner has another western on the “Horizon,” and it will put Costner back in the director’s chair.
John Dutton has to do ‘something’ in ‘Yellowstone’ Season 5
The Duttons have been fighting to save their beloved Yellowstone Ranch during the first four seasons of the hit Paramount Network drama. And in season 5, their numerous adversaries are closing in. The conflict is only going to get worse in the upcoming season, according to Costner. And it’s up to the family patriarch to keep the land in the family.
“It’s been set up in a sense that there’s so much pressure on what’s coming for his land that he’s going to have to do something. We’re going to see what he did and does to stay ahead of it and I think that’s what John Dutton has to do,” Costner told Variety.
“But the pressures about the land have been, always for this family, [that they’ve] got to hold on to it with a level of violence … The walls pressing on [John] are environmentalists, the Native American issues, politicians, the public outcry for more land. So, he’s dealing with really modern problems.”
Kevin Costner is directing an epic western titled ‘Horizon’
In late August, Costner will be back in the director’s chair for the first time since 2003 when he helmed the critically acclaimed western Open Range. His new film Horizon is a “longtime passion project” that has “the sweep” of his 1990 epic Dances With Wolves. But, this project is bigger than just one movie.
Costner has plans to split the western epic into “four different movies” that will be released “about every three months.”
“They’re all different films that all connect, so you’re watching a saga of these storylines that are happening,” Costner explained.
Casting is already underway for the project’s 170 speaking roles, and production for Horizon is scheduled to begin on August 29 in Utah. Costner will be the director, producer, and star. He will also finance the movies through his Territory Pictures production company.
The ‘Yellowstone’ star says his latest project highlights ‘really strong’ women
Similar to the Yellowstone prequel 1883, Horizon is set in America’s Western frontier during the 19th century and will focus on both settlers and Indigenous groups over the span of 15 years.
“It’s a really beautiful story; it’s a hard story. It really involves a lot of women, to be honest. There are a lot of men in it, too, but the women are really strong in Horizon. It’s just them trying to get by every day in a world that was impossibly tough,” Costner explained.
“They were often [dragged] out to these places because that’s where the men wanted to go; women were following their men. They didn’t ask to be in these territories that were unsettled and dangerous, and life wasn’t easy.”
Costner says he wants to make it obvious in the films that life wasn’t easy on the frontier, and that people were extremely vulnerable during that time. The first Horizon film will shoot this fall, while the other three films will go into production “at the same time” in April 2023. A release date has not yet been revealed.
Yellowstone Season 5 premieres Sunday, November 13 on the Paramount Network.
