The release of Kevin Costner’s Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 2 looks further away as a legal battle gets underway.
The story so far. Kevin Costner’s passion project is a series of four western feature films, entitled Horizon: An American Saga. Last summer saw the release of Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 1, while Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 2 was set to head into cinemas several weeks later.
The muted box office response to the first film led to the release of the second being postponed, and nearly a year later, Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 2 has appeared at a film festival and enjoyed a US premiere. However, it’s not on the release lists anywhere and seems stuck in limbo.
Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 3 and Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 4 remain, save for nine minutes of footage, unfilmed.
I’ve been asking questions for a while now over the release of Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 2, not least to writer/director/star Kevin Costner, and been coming up blank. To this day, it’s not on the release lists in the US or the UK, and a freshly-revealed legal case isn’t going to help.
New Line Cinema, part of the Warner Bros Discover empire, inked a deal to distribute the first two films, but as per The Hollywood Reporter, it’s now filed a legal claim for arbitration over alleged breaches of said deal.
From what I can glean, Horizon Series, the company Kevin Costner set up to cover the financing from his side, is the target of New Line’s case. But before that, City National Bank had already asked for arbitration with both New Line and Horizon Series to do with the co-financing.
None of the three parties involved are commenting on the case, but City National Bank is seemingly looking for the other two to repay some of the money it loaned. New Line reckons it’s paid its share. It’s all allegations and noise, and in the middle of it, there’s one unreleased, completed film that seems stick in limbo with New Line, and two more apparently no closer to being filmed.
Makes your heart sink, this, and presumably this all has to get sorted before we’ll even get the release of the second film.
I’ll keep asking questions, and will come back as and when I know more.
