Kevin Costner's New Western Movie Sounds Worryingly Like His 14% Flop From 27 Years Ago

Summary Like Costner's past projects, Horizon: An American Saga is receiving mixed reviews and faces uncertain box office prospects.

Horizon mirrors Costner's prior film The Postman with similar flaws: lengthy runtime, self-serious tone, and critical dismissal.

Despite similarities to past failures, Horizon could still escape The Postman's legacy with future installments and revised critical reception.

Kevin Costner's Western epic Horizon: An American Saga has had a mixed response from critics, with many reviews echoing the reaction to one of the director-writer-actor's previous projects. Although he is extremely distinguished as a filmmaker, Costner's record in the industry is actually fairly mixed. Despite finding huge success with projects like Dances With Wolves, he has also featured in infamous flops, such as Waterworld. As a result, his involvement in a project is no guarantee of success – a trend that seems to be repeating with Horizon.

In many ways, Horizon is the definition of a passion project. In an interview with Deadline, Costner confirmed that he'd commissioned the project back in 1988, though studios were unwilling to back his vision. After decades of work, the story has morphed into a multi-chapter saga, with four Horizon films in total. This ambition is laudable. However, the scale of the project hasn't stopped critics from reacting coldly to the first installment, with just 35% giving it a positive review (via Rotten Tomatoes). In isolation, this reaction is disappointing. What's more worrying, however, is how it seems to repeat a pattern established by a previous Kevin Costner film.

Related 8 Reasons Reviews For Kevin Costner's New Western Are So Bad Kevin Costner's passion project Horizon: An American Saga is supposed to be released in four parts, but the first entry hasn't been well-received.

Horizon Is Reminiscent of Kevin Costner's The Postman

The Projects Have Some Worrying Similarities

Just as Horizon offers an expansive and epic take on the traditions of the Western genre, Costner's 1997 project, The Postman, can be said to occupy a similar narrative niche. Unlike the 2024 feature, The Postman is set in a post-apocalyptic America, giving its Western sensibilities an interesting, futuristic edge. However, while their settings are very different, the two films have several intriguing similarities – making Horizon's prospects ahead of a wider theatrical release on June 28th, 2024 even more worrying.

Budget Box Office Rotten Tomatoes Score Runtime The Postman (1997) $80 million $30 million 14% 177 minutes Horizon: An American Saga, Chapter 1 (2024 $100 million – 35% 181 minutes

For starters, both movies star and are directed by Costner himself. Unfortunately, the extent of Costner's involvement makes the two film's flaws equally comparable. While Horizon holds a 35% Rotten Tomatoes score, The Postman performed even less favorably, rating at just 14%. In both cases, critics highlighted the two films' bloated runtime (each running to around three hours), plodding story, and self-serious tone. Given that The Postman was a critical and commercial failure, the fact that Horizon seems to have so much in common with it does not bode well for its box office prospects.

Why The Postman Flopped So Badly

It Failed On Several Fronts

There are multiple reasons why The Postman failed to resonate with viewers. From a critical standpoint, the biggest issues were its length (177 minutes) and tone. As the Rotten Tomatoes critical consensus explains, "A massive miscalculation in self-mythologizing by director and star Kevin Costner, The Postman would make for a goofy good time if it weren't so fatally self-serious." Some notable voices were particularly harsh, with legendary critic Gene Siskel taking specific issue with the perceived self-aggrandizement on display (memorably calling the film "Dances With Myself" in reference to Costner's earlier Oscar-winning feature).

As with many box office disappointments, it's not always clear the extent to which critical dismissal contributed to poor financial performance. Nevertheless, it's undeniable that after a comprehensive critical mauling, the movie bombed with audiences. On an $80 million budget (again, not dissimilar to Horizon's reported $100 million), the film made just $30 million globally – a massive loss by any measure. While not as notorious as Costner's other post-apocalyptic adventure movie, Waterworld, The Postman actually represents a more comprehensive failure.

Related Horizon: An American Saga Chapter 2 - Release Date & Everything We Know Kevin Costner's passion project is on the way but attention is already turning towards how the Western epic with Horizon: An American Saga 2.

Horizon's The Postman Similarities Are Bad News For The Movie's Future

It's Mirroring The Earlier Film's Failure

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Given how closely Horizon and The Postman seem to align – with their shared director, actor, tonal issues, excessive runtimes, thematic similarities, and poor critical reactions – the precedent provided by the 1997 movie would seem to bode poorly for Horizon's chances when it finally arrives in theaters. Arguably, the movie already faced an uphill struggle. As an original project, with no affiliation to a wider franchise, it was always fighting against substantial odds. Combined with the movie's $100 million budget, Horizon has the daunting task of needing to make around $250 million globally to break even.

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Although more than two decades separate the two films, the lessons provided by The Postman's failings remain true for any film. While not a hard and fast rule, it's generally accepted that any original epic project needs positive reviews to coax would-be viewers to sit down for a three-hour theatrical marathon. Even then, Western movies can struggle to attract a substantial audience – as demonstrated by well-reviewed box office bombs like the slow-burn 2007 epic The Assassination of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford ($15 million on a $30 million budget).

While The Postman is the most obvious comparison thanks to Costner's extensive involvement in both, the film also seems to echo the likes of Michael Cimino's notorious Heaven's Gate...

Unfortunately, Horizon's inflated budget seemingly puts it on a similar path to historic genre flops. While The Postman is the most obvious comparison thanks to Costner's extensive involvement in both, the film also seems to echo the likes of Michael Cimino's notorious Heaven's Gate, which was critically panned (before a later critical reassessment) and made just $3.5 million against a $44 million budget. Even acclaimed Westerns can struggle if their budget becomes too inflated – a fact demonstrated by the 2023 Oscar-nominated Killers of the Flower Moon ($157 million on a $200 million budget). None of this bodes well for Horizon's chances.

Horizon Can Still Escape The Postman's Legacy

It Isn't Automatically Doomed

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While Horizon's clear similarities to a historic failure like The Postman are alarming, there are still reasons for filmmakers to be positive. For one thing, whereas The Postman's 14% Rotten Tomatoes score comes from a wide range of reviews post-release, Horizon's critical reaction comes only from those who saw the film at its Cannes Film Festival premiere. It may be that, once more critics have a chance to appraise it, its score goes up.

A further factor is that, unlike The Postman, Horizon has been promoted and conceived as part of a wider story. In some ways, this is a key point of difference between the projects, as while many critics have reprimanded the film for feeling incomplete, there is a recognition that it is difficult to appraise its worth until future chapters arrive. Even if Horizon: An American Saga continues to receive negative reviews, it may be that the film is more positively received in hindsight when Horizon: Chapter 2 arrives later in 2024. Given the amount of money involved, this is clearly a risk. Nevertheless, it may be that the gamble retrospectively pays off.

Source: Deadline, Rotten Tomatoes