Kevin Costner’s latest Western project, ‘Horizon,’ has shades of an American classic

In a 30-minute controlled interview to preview his latest project, Kevin Costner did not address the yellow elephant in the room. No one is sure if John Dutton is actually dead, or “scheduled to meet his maker.”

Until Taylor Sheridan’s modern-day-Dynasty hit “Yellowstone” returns for what sounds like will be the conclusion to its fifth and final season this fall, Costner can focus on a project that he has wanted to do since the late 1980s. Around the same time he made a film that established his name as a serious filmmaker, the Academy Award-winner “Dances With Wolves.”

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Hard to believe this but Kevin Costner is 69. It only feels like he’s about 39. He has made countless other films across a variety genres, and yet he is one of the few actors we all identify with the West, old and current. Maybe not to the level of a Clint Eastwood, but Costner is in this discussion.

His latest film combines the sprawling Hollywood Western saga with this generation’s willingness to accept, and now expect, at the end of every TV show or film, “To Be Continued ...” Costner wrote, directed, produced and stars in “Horizon: An American Saga,” a four-part film that spans 15 years, pre- and post Civil War, focusing on America’s expansion west.

Chapter 1 of this series is scheduled to be released in theaters on June 28, and Chapter 2 on Aug. 16. The remaining two chapters are TBD.

“Horizon” has the look of a cousin to the original CBS made-for-TV film “Lonesome Dove.” That landmark series, based on the best-selling book by Larry McMurtry, remains one of the best westerns ever produced.

Actor Robert Duvall, who played Gus McRae in “Lonesome Dove,” once said in an interview with Charlie Rose of PBS, “Somebody said, ‘When is going to be the next ‘Lonesome Dove?’ I said, ‘Not for another hundred years.’”

Only the trailer is available for “Horizon,” but Costner looks to have cut Duvall’s prediction by about 70 years.

Costner would never admit it, but it is probably not a coincidence that he started working on “Horizon” around the same time “Lonesome Dove” aired, in 1989. “Lonesome Dove,” at six hours and 24 minutes, is one of those rare creations that stays with you long after you’ve seen it.

“Some of the great things we do in life is when we read a great book, we tell people about it the next day,” Costner said in a small Zoom press conference on Feb. 23. “Somehow we like to pass things on; I always like the feeling, when a movie touched me, that I told people about it the next day.”

It’s one of those standards that sounds easy, and it is so hard to attain.

Because of the quantity of content that exists today across multiple devices in a house, it’s doubtful a “Horizon” or any series could have the impact as “Lonesome Dove.” That series was an event; it won seven Emmy awards, and remains one of the highest rated series in TV history.

Today, the hope is the show is good, it finds an audience and it “goes viral.” That’s essentially what happened with “Yellowstone,” a modern day soap opera set in the modern West that found an audience no studio could have expected.

Like “Lonesome Dove,” which featured a cast that included Duvall, Tommy Lee Jones, Danny Glover, Diane Lane and a long list of other top tier talent in supporting roles, Costner attracted a slew of Hollywood names people know who wanted to play Cowboys ‘n’ Indians during a two-month shoot in Utah.

Sienna Miller, Sam Worthington, Jena Malone, Michael Rooker, Will Patton, Luke Wilson, Kathleen Quinlan and a load of others have roles.

What “Horizon” is not is continuation of “Dances With Wolves” a timeless movie that followed a Civil War vet who integrated himself with native Americans while they saw their way of life and land gobbled up by an expanding white population.

“Horizon” covers the same time period, and unintentionally the same themes: Americans looking to move west, to make a claim, and to live in a life starting from almost nothing in often horrible conditions.

“The Civil War kept the focus of the country on the East Coast,” Costner said. “The minute that war was over in 1865, the country looked west again; and in 25 years something that had been there for thousands of years, it was over.”

That 25-year stretch remains the most romanticized period in American history, eclipsing WWII. The “Old West” still attract tourists from all over the world, and the Western genre remains relevant here in 2024.

“Our national appetite was to be satisfied at the disadvantage of those who had been there and had flourished in their own way,” Costner said. “I don’t know if I’ve ever come to terms with that myself. I want to project what really happened.

“There was a great injustice that occurred in the West, but it doesn’t minimize the courage it took from my ancestors to cut loose and go there. I recognize the bravery it took to leave and make this march across this country.”

Because it contains so many threads, and contrasting backgrounds of snow, heat, desert and mountains, the American west remains the story that we can’t quit, no matter how many times we’ve seen it.

It’s one of the reasons Costner returns to it, be it in the form of John Dutton or an American looking to go west, and maybe capture the wonder of a “Lonesome Dove.”