'Horizon' Isn’t a Dad Movie. It’s Actually a Dad Show.
Kevin Costner made a long episode of a limited series you have to go to a movie theater to see
First, I want to welcome the new subscribers who came here from Episodic Medium. I’m really looking forward to covering Bad Monkey over there next month. Miles has built such a great community for TV lovers here on Substack, and I’m thrilled to get to join it. I hope you enjoy what you find here on Dad Shows in the meantime.
Second, I need to call your attention to some enormous Dad Shows news: Richard Gere has joined Michael Fassbender and Jeffrey Wright in the cast of The Agency, Showtime/Paramount+’s upcoming CIA drama that’s a remake of the excellent French series The Bureau. That’s going to be the most important Dad Show of 2025, so let’s all get excited about it, because if you’re here, you’ll watch the shit out of that. I was just thinking about how Richard Gere is due for a resurgence. This show is not part of the Sheridanverse, but it will fit nicely alongside Lioness as another CIA show with movie stars on Paramount+. If you’ve never watched The Bureau, I highly recommend it. It’s a Dad Shows Hall of Famer.
Speaking of things that are not part of the Sheridanverse but you could say are Sheridan-adjacent, this week’s Dad Shows main event is Horizon: An American Saga — Chapter 1, the first of writer-director-producer-star Kevin Costner’s planned quartet of Western movies.
But at what Cost-ner?
Horizon is an absolutely insane project, and Kevin Costner has to have been driven mad by ego to even attempt it. But I have to hand it to him for being so ballsy in a time when Hollywood is distressingly risk-averse.
If you’re unfamiliar with the metanarrative around Horizon, I’ll do my best to briefly recap it below. And judging by Horizon’s mediocre box office performance so far, you either are unaware of Horizon entirely, or were not so intrigued by the offscreen drama that you were persuaded to make the trip to the theater to see it.
Kevin Costner’s career was resurrected by Yellowstone, the biggest show on TV. Costner used his renewed but temporary clout to try to make his magnum opus while he could, a four-part epic Western film series called Horizon. His commitments to Horizon put his schedule in conflict with his commitments to Yellowstone, and he chose Horizon. But Taylor Sheridan is now a much more important star than Costner, and basically said, “all right, pardner, if you can’t do the show, we don’t need you.” And the show is currently filming its final episodes without Costner. It was a very chaotic and expensive exit that played out in the press over the course of a year and a half. In this titanic clash of egos, Sherdian had the bigger horse. To me, the entire Yellowstone/rise of Taylor Sheridan saga is the most interesting Hollywood story of the past decade. I hope someone writes a behind-the-scenes book about it. I’m available.
Costner’s life was falling apart. He was going through two bitter, public divorces, one from Yellowstone and one from his wife. Horizon was all he had, so he went all in. He told GQ’s Zach Baron that he put $38 million of his own money into the project. The rest has come from shadowy investors that he won’t name. (Maybe it’s the people who bankrolled Tommy Wiseau to make The Room.) He made the first two movies back-to-back and started on the third before the first one even came out.
Once again: He made… The first two movies back-to-back… And started on the third… Before the first one… Even came out.
I am neither a filmmaker nor a businessman, but I know enough about common sense to know that’s not how you make movies.
I think I’m so drawn to the hubris of Horizon because it reminds me of The Messenger, the ill-fated website where I worked for nine months before it spectacularly crashed and burned. They’re both stories where a past-his-prime egomaniac (founder Jimmy Finkelstein, in The Messenger’s case) got a ridiculous amount to do a transparently bad idea. The difference is that while The Messenger was always destined to completely flop, there was a chance that even if Horizon failed financially, it could at least be a good movie.
And it could still be. I don’t know yet. I only watched the beginning.
Dad Cinema
After I wrote about Gladiator last week, I felt a little weird about doing two movies in a row. But then I saw Horizon, and my apprehension went away. Because Horizon — Chapter 1 is not a movie. It’s the first episode of a miniseries.
The movie is all setup. By the end of three hours, no main character’s arc has even gotten to the middle. It’s all still at the beginning of the story. And there are so many characters in so many different places that even though the movie is three hours long, I didn’t feel like I spent much time with any of them.
Horizon is very fast-paced. It’s never boring. The performances are strong, and the cinematography is beautiful. It’s too bad that Costner didn’t get to make any movies for 20 years, because he’s a very good director. His lifelong fascination with the settling of the frontier makes him well-suited to tell this expansive story about the American mythos.
But it’s a TV show. I don’t mean that as a knock, just a description. Going to see Horizon is the same as going to see the first three episodes of The Chosen in a theater. Being on Yellowstone must have given Costner TV brain, because he structured a movie like a very long episode of a limited series.
I can’t stress enough what a wild-ass gamble it is for Costner to do it this way. He’s betting that people will be so enraptured with the three hours of setup in Chapter 1 that they’ll come back for Chapter 2, which is the middle of the story. And then they’ll come back two more times after that. And he’s so confident that people will keep coming that he’s already completed two episodes and is filming a third — that he’ll probably have to rework to be the finale, because his backers are going to decide they’ve lost enough money already.
The hubris is thrilling and hilarious. This man does not give a fuck. Except about Horizon. He gives so many fucks about this project. He’s putting his money where his mouth is, which is more than you can say about anyone except Francis Ford Coppola. He is a true artist. God grant me the confidence of Kevin Costner.
It’s unlikely that I will return for Chapters 2-4. I don’t think I have nine more hours in me. But some people are banging with Horizon. I went to a 10 a.m. opening day screening, and I was expecting to be the only person there. But there were four other individuals in the theater. When the movie ended, one of them said out loud, “That was great.” She will ride with Costner until they reach the promised land where the prairie meets the sky.