Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis isn’t this year’s only epic around which a director has staked much of their finances to fulfill. After owning television screens for the past few years, Kevin Costner is making his major return to the big screen as a director with his first film in more than two decades. The first two parts of his western Horizon: An American Saga will be released in the span of just a few months this summer: June 24 for Horizon: An American Saga Chapter 1, followed by an August 16 release for Horizon: An American Saga Chapter 2. Plans were also recently confirmed Costner will be opening his own film studio in St. George, Utah where he plans to conclude the saga with parts 3 and 4.
Ahead of the release of the first two parts, Warner Bros. has now released the first full trailer. Also starring Sienna Miller, Sam Worthington, Jena Malone, Abbey Lee, Michael Rooker, Danny Huston, Luke Wilson, Isabelle Fuhrman, Jeff Fahey, Will Patton, Tatanka Means, Owen Crow Shoe, Ella Hunt, and Jamie Campbell Bower, the film spans four years of the Civil War, from 1861 to 1865. “In the great tradition of Warner Bros. Pictures’ iconic Westerns,” reads the official synopsis, “Costner’s ambitious cinematic adventure will take audiences on an emotional journey across a country at war with itself, experienced through the lens of families, friends and foes all attempting to discover what it truly means to be the United States of America.”
“It’s a really beautiful story; it’s a hard story,” Costner said. “It really involves a lot of women, to be honest. There are a lot of men in it, too, but the women are really strong in Horizon. It’s just them trying to get by every day in a world that was impossibly tough. They were often [dragged] out to these places because that’s where the men wanted to go; women were following their men. They didn’t ask to be in these territories that were unsettled and dangerous, and life wasn’t easy. I’ve chosen to make sure that was really obvious, that that wasn’t easy, and how vulnerable people were.”
See the trailer below: