Kevin Costner On Betting His Own Money For 'Horizon: An American ...
As Horizon: An American Saga filmmaker Kevin Costner recently told Deadline that he’s on schedule to shell out $98 million for the first three movies in his Western series, and a fourth film will take him over the $100 million threshold.
On Monday, the day after Horizon premiered at the Cannes Film Festival, the two-time Oscar winner expounded on gambling on his own vision with his own property at a Cannes press conference.
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“I’ve acquired — I don’t need four homes,” said Costner about how he used his own funds to bankroll the pics. “I’ll risk those homes to make my movies. I want to leave them to my children, but my children will have to live their own lives.”
“I don’t know why it’s so hard to get people to believe in the movie I wanted to make. … I don’t think anybody’s else’s movie is better than mine. I made it for people.”
“It’s a pattern that happens with me — with Dances With Wolves, Bull Durham, Field of Dreams, Open Range — the things I want to make are harder to make,” he said.
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“My problem is that I don’t fall out of love with something that’s good,” said the filmmaker-actor about the projects he keeps in lengthy development.
“I’d like to come back here with my third movie,” said Costner about a future return to Cannes with Horizon Chapter 3.
Costner has already shot three days of part 3. “I’m trying to make the third one. I knocked on every boat in Cannes to help me. The guys say, ‘C’mon, we’ll get a picture.’ I said. ‘No, get your checkbook out.’ “
He quipped to the press room that everyone should stand “in front of one boat” and not “let the riche people off.”
He also joked about the whole notion of hitting the red carpet at Cannes, “I use to get no money to do this, then I got paid a lot of money to do this, now I need to pay my own money to do this.”
Horizon returns Costner to the Western genre, chronicling the expansion of the American West before and after the Civil War. Between the Native Americans who saw their lands getting colonized and those who were determined to settle there, sometimes at any cost, history is being written.
Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 1 is due to hit theaters June 28 via Warner Bros, with the second coming on its heels August 16. Costner told Deadline recently that Chapter 3 began production this month.
The three-hour movie received an 11-minute, 40-second standing ovation last night at its Cannes world premiere.
Costner teased that Chapter 4 of Horizon will see a big presence by Native Americans in the story.
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