Sometimes when you swing big you hit a home run, sometimes you whif. When Kevin Costner started putting together his plan for a 4-part sweeping historical epic he had to know there was a good chance that it wouldn’t land with audiences. Still, Costner went all in, producing two installments of Horizon: An American Saga up front with an aggressive release plan putting those first two installments into theaters within two months of each other.
Unfortunately for Costner, we are seeing one of the worst box office summers in memory and his first installment has been a casualty of that. Horizon: An American Saga Part 1 is in its third week of release and has only pulled in $22M, with a budget a bit over $100M the term “bomb” is being rightly applied. To add insult to injury Costner personally invested in the film and is on track to lose about $35M on just this first film.
Seeing the writing on the wall the decision has been made to pull Horizon: An American Saga: Part 2 from it’s originally planned release date of August 16th. The official reason given is that they want to give audiences more of an opportunity to see the first film in theaters, which doesn’t seem sensical. Without amazing word of mouth films always follow a downward trajectory when it comes to theater attendance, to put it simply, no one else is coming. While I fully understand the stance of “Films that need to be seen in theaters” I think, at this point, filmmakers have to be realistic about the fact that most film fans have proven that they don’t really care about the theater vs home viewing experience.
No updated release date has been given for part 2, but I would imagine they are going to hold that decision until after part 1 is available for streaming. There’s no end to the list of movies that have bombed in theaters but have found their audience on streaming, I have no doubt that Horizon: An American Saga will fall into this category. I like Costner, so I’m pulling for him on this. It’s not out of the question that they will find a huge audience on streaming which will lead to a built in audience for the remaining installments leading to a much better box office performance going forward.
