Kevin Costner’s Next Movie Will Be Over Ten Hours Long

Kevin Costner is about to start filming his next movie which is looking very much like it will be an absolute epic film, especially in length

By Doug Norrie | Published

This article is more than 2 years old

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Kevin Costner seems to know a thing or two about Westerns, or at least about making movies having to do with the West. Between that style and baseball, we have most of the actor and director’s best work covered. And his next directorial effort is going to be in line with the other movies he’s helmed up until this point. Though this one could separate from those previous efforts in one very distinct category: length. Variety is reporting that Kevin Costner’s Horizon could be such an in-depth and expansive affair that it won’t fit into just one movie. In fact, two might not even do it. Costner is suggesting or maybe even hoping that the movie will end up being four total parts and could be more than 10 hours long.

According to what Kevin Costner told Variety, Horizon will break down more as four separate films “that all connect” and the director is calling them more of a “saga” than anything else. The logline for Horizon says that it covers a 15-year period during the time America was expanding and settling the Western frontier in the post-Civil War timeline. The flick will tell the story of not only the settlers making their way into this uncharted territory but also of the indigenous people already living there. Costner also gave a clue at just how huge this production was when he said they are casting for 170 different speaking roles.

If the four-film plan that Kevin Costner mentions ends up playing out, the idea would be to release one every three months so that all four came out within the same calendar year. Production is set to begin this fall and would last the rest of 2022 and at least half of 2023. For a movie shoot, eight months is an incredibly long time, but again, this isn’t your typical movie we are talking about here. This seems more like a franchise of films that will come together to form one epic story. It’s a massive undertaking from Kevin Costner and company though it appears a ton of time and care has gone into making sure this is just the right kind of story to tell. And Costner himself clearly has an affinity for this kind of story and definitely for this time period.

Horizon will be Kevin Costner’s fourth directorial effort having helmed Open Range, The Postman, and of course, Dances with Wolves. That movie won Kevin Costner Best Picture and Best Director and earned him a nomination for Best Actor. The other two movies didn’t quite live up to the cultural impact of the first, but Costner has clearly proven he has the chops to pull something like Horizon off. 

And Horizon isn’t the only Western foray for Kevin Costner, far from it. He’s still slated to play John Dutton on Yellowstone for at least another season. The show has become one of television’s surprise hits over the last couple of years with viewership only increasing with each passing season. So there’s a lot on Kevin Costner’s plate right now, but it is all in and around the same theme.