It’s looking like the era of the Hollywood Western is back and here to stay thanks to Kevin Costner.
The lead of Paramount’s wildly popular modern Western series “Yellowstone” will now star in what is being described as a “four-film saga” Western epic called “Horizon: An American Saga,” per The Hollywood Reporter.
The saga’s story was apparently so enticing to Costner that it “lured him away” from working on the Paramount show, which is saying something given the near-universal critical acclaim “Yellowstone” has garnered over the years.
Costner released the first full trailer for the film saga on Monday.
The trailer’s epic shots of Western landscapes, intense gunfight scenes, beautiful sets and rugged costumes all indicate these films are going to be about as Western, and about as high-quality, as films can get.
Warner Bros. Pictures subsidiary New Line Cinema will produce the films. Costner himself will serve as co-writer, director and star of all four.
The film series will certainly be released in unique fashion.
Unlike most productions of this quality, the releases will not be separated by years but by months.
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The first is set to hit theaters as soon as June 28, and the second roughly two months later on Aug. 16.
It is unclear when the final two films will come out — per the Hollywood Reporter, they have not even been filmed yet.
“When no one wanted to make the first one, I got the bright idea to make four,” Costner said according to the Reporter.
“So I don’t know what’s wrong with me. But I wanted it to step away from what we usually see in Westerns where there’s a town that’s already there. No one knows how [the town] came to be. There’s a guy comes in off the horizon, if you will.
“We don’t know much about him, except that he has some skills he’d like to put behind him and this town ends up needing those stills desperately … Too often, it’s just a convenience for the hero guy to knock down a dumb guy.”
Costner went on to share his belief that most modern Westerns “aren’t good” because they lack the complexity.
The little details about how hard it was to survive and provide for a family back in the 1800s all need to be addressed and will be in the “Horizon” films, according to the actor-director.
One scene in the trailer shows white settlers coming into conflict with Native American tribes, a moment The Reporter made a point to bring up.
Costner made it clear that while he doesn’t approve of how some of those conflicts played out, he also didn’t want those misdeeds to diminish the courage and accomplishments of early American settlers.
“I’m ashamed of what happened — I don’t know that I’m ashamed or embarrassed — but I want to project what really happened,” he told The Hollywood Reporter.
“There was a great injustice occurred in the West, but it doesn’t minimize the courage it took for my ancestors to cut loose and go there. And I recognized the resourcefulness it took and the bravery it took to leave and make this march across this country.
“It’s just a movie that shows the class of cultures. It’s our history. I love it. I can enjoy watching a movie like this if I feel like I can see myself in it, and I tried really hard for that to happen.”
