Fatal first weekend at the box-office. The film earned only $11 million.
Sounds like they were expecting it to not be great if it's scheduled for digital release next week.
Just another way of bringing in the revenue of people who have big wide screens at home who prefer the comfort of home. It will help increase the gross.
Sounds like they were expecting it to not be great if it's scheduled for digital release next week.
Has WB/Discovery announced this? Their other releases typically have a 90 day window between the theaters and then availability on Max (or whatever it will be called today). The window is shorter for the paid streaming rental option but I cannot find any news about that on a ancillary Google search.
My wife and I are gonna see it next week. I think it deserves to be seen in the theater. A mid-budgeted epic story by a director who loves the genre, I'm sure it will at least look grand. I like Costner's Westerns. It's kind of weird to make what amounts to a mini series for the big screen but okay.
The conversation with the missus about this:
Me: Hey do you have any interest in seeing Kevin Costner's new Western movie?" Her: "Is it like Yellowstone?" Me: (sigh) "No, it not like Yellowstone." Her: "Oh." Me: "Butttt, it's why he left Yellowstone." (a bit of white lie but a harmless one) Her: "Oh, okay.'
Fatal first weekend at the box-office. The film earned only $11 million.
Sounds like they were expecting it to not be great if it's scheduled for digital release next week.
Just another way of bringing in the revenue of people who have big wide screens at home who prefer the comfort of home. It will help increase the gross.
Demographics show older audiences post-Pandemic have never returned to cinema-going en masse (yes, still), so in this case, watching Horizon at home is how many in those demographic will choose to see it.
Why bother and Gen....whatever generation... we're up to, will probably find it all antiquated.
Respect those holding onto what prior gens knew, but it's all over friends. Excitement for a film to theatrically succeed, and be enjoyed by a joyful crowd of humans in a room....its over.
I believe there is NOTHING so strong to join people in a communal cinematic event/ experience ever again. Certainly not effing Star Wars, arguably the key cinematic property that humans linked to with no prejudice....until now.
Streamers truly did destroy Hollywood. Wish it was a fast exit instead of this slow death.
I'm thankful I enjoyed 1930-2015 in cinema. More power to the sad children staring at tablets and not giving Lawrence of Arabia more than 2mins of attention. You didn't know what you missed...
Ok, REALLY back to my Papillon Exile confinement....damn I hate that reel of the otherwise classic film...
Hurdy, the review does compare this movie to How the West Was Won. HWWW shows the white migration through the West and makes the Native Americans the bad guys in that movie. Decades later note how Dances With Wolves changes that perspective. I imagine this movie will do that also.
I'm all in for an old-fashioned score. Not to pick nits, but as I recall the Indians (sorry, Native Americans ... habits are hard to break) were quite sympathetically portrayed in the Train Sequence of HWWW. Sure, they attacked the wagon train in that sequence, but only to take horses -- not to kill. As for the music: I fully agree -- nothing better than that type of score!
This new generation and what comes next if the world is to survive a resurgence of despots will not know names like John Wayne, Frank Sinatra, Roy Rogers. They will have to look it up at Wikipedia.com. They will no doubt say,what’s a film composer ?
About ten years ago, back in my working life, I was shocked that a young adult I was working with did not know who Duke Ellington was. Perhaps if "Take the A-Train" was sampled . . .
I'm sure people of my grandparents' generation were horrified that I was unfamiliar with "Naughty Marietta," The Adventures of Rex and Rinty, and the hit TV comedy "December Bride."
But this is how it's always been. Honestly, how could it be any other way? We don't stop creating entertainment. There's only so much bandwidth. Only a select few endure, the rest fall out of public consciousness (not completely forgotten, just not in the zeitgeist).
This movie will find it's audience in time. Costner knew the risk he was taking and he was in an advantageous position financially and industry-wise to get this passion project made. Only the Tarantino Westerns have managed to strike a box office chord in this modern era. This film doesn't have the same sense of mainstream appeal.
Agreed on all your points - but the question is: what is mainstream now?
Adult drama with a movie star was mainstream in the last century. Now it seems that IP drawing different quadrants of the audience is mainstream, for example „Inside Out 2“ or any sequel to movie franchises.
The important and troubling consequence for cinemas is this: after the pandemic older moviegoers tend to stay home for streaming. Only teenagers and young adults go to the movies in big numbers, and that’s what decides opening weekends.
As for HORIZON‘s performance: only deadline.com, with Pete Hammond being friendly with Costner, reported that the film made what OPEN RANGE did on its first weekend, and that it worked quite well in the middle of the country, actually drawing in those older audiences. It could have legs in the long run, slowly adding to the box office. (By the way, something TITANIC and AVATAR did, too, and many outlets at first declared those films also underperformers.)
The Hollywood Reporter and Owen Gleiberman in Variety, however, only went for schadenfreude and declared HORIZON a bomb. Which is not true. The film performed according to estimates.
Of course, HORIZON does not have the appeal of TITANIC or AVATAR or any Pixar film (again, last year’s ELEMENTAL was declared a bomb but became a hit after doing consistent business). It is a three hour western without TicToc-appeal and without Chalamet/Zendaya. It will never earn the kind of money entertainment outlets like to hype.
Was the planned four-film saga a bad idea from the start, destined to fail?
Only if you think: this will be a huge success.
But what will cinema be if movies only will be greenlit and distributed when they are the perfect marketing package?
But what will cinema be if movies only will be greenlit and distributed when they are the perfect marketing package?
I applaud Costner taking this risk.
Agreed. This movie was Costner's dream project and I'm glad he managed to make it (at least the first three so far) because cinema and movies need this kind of "mania" or commitment; moves born out of the creators' love of the projects instead of the Hollywood marketing department.
Of course, HORIZON does not have the appeal of TITANIC or AVATAR or any Pixar film (again, last year’s ELEMENTAL was declared a bomb but became a hit after doing consistent business). It is a three hour western without TicToc-appeal and without Chalamet/Zendaya. It will never earn the kind of money entertainment outlets like to hype.
I haven't seen Costner's new film yet, but this was looking a risky venture indeed on the paper already. I applaud nonetheless the temerity of self-financing an ambitious passion project like this. As for the disappointing BO returns in the opening weekend, this doesn't look like the type of movie that opens huge, but more of a potential "long legs" one. I'm sure it may find its own audience over time. Anywyay, the sad thing is that the current industry doesn't seem to allow for long legs anymore, at least theater-wise, nor have the patience for the once-called "sleeper hit". Everything must perform with huge numbers from the get-go and only big studio tentpoles seem able to do so these days. Last year's so-called "Barbenheimer" phenomena was truly the exception to the rule and perhaps a natural reaction after three years of pandemic gloom, i.e. people had an enormous incentive to get out of their homes and be part of a sort of collective ritual (a wafer-thin one, in my humble opinion). I fear that both HORIZON parts 1 and 2 may very well do modest numbers at the BO for a few weeks before hitting the streaming road, where it may possibly find a larger audience and perhaps a more logical space given its TV miniseries-like structure.
Overall, I liked this movie. Yes, it seems disjointed at times, but I think we were getting set up to meet the various characters and their stories. I think the various plots will dovetail together in the second movie. My only complaints were a few scenes where the dialogue kept going on and on without any real context or relationship to the visuals. I wanted better dialogue. Still, I am VERY eager to watch Chapter II.
In the beginning of the movie, I thought the main theme was just okay. However, when I first saw Costner, I loved that cue. The Montage Beginning Cue was superb! Debney's score deserves an Oscar nomination if not an Oscar. Unfortunately, the Academy will probably award a score that is all sound design or one that sounds like an upchucking vacuum cleaner.
I believe there is NOTHING so strong to join people in a communal cinematic event/ experience ever again.
So, just a year after BARBIE, OPPENHEIMER, and SUPER MARIO BROS. earn a billion dollars, and a week after INSIDE OUT 2 earns a billion dollars, cinema as a communal experience is dead! While the demographics of those four films may not exactly parallel that of STAR WARS, no film earns a $1 billion by playing to a niche audience.
After Debney erroneously reported in an interview that La-La Land was releasing his music from 'Sudden Death', I wonder if the information from the interview that 'Horizon' will be released on CD is also incorrect.
Some of them sound very nice. 
