Kevin Costner on the U.S. premiere of “Horizon: An American Saga — Chapter 1” on June 24 in Los Angeles.
Frazer Harrison/Getty Photos
Kevin Costner has been defying the chances for greater than 40 years.
After filming quite a few flashback scenes for 1983’s The Large Chill, the film that was poised to be his massive break, he discovered he had been lower out of the movie solely… however then that movie’s director, Lawrence Kasdan, determined to offer him one other shot, casting him in a plum half in 1985’s Silverado, which made him a star.
Not lengthy after, as a burgeoning A-lister, he was warned to keep away from baseball motion pictures as a result of they hardly ever did enterprise on the field workplace… however then he determined to make two of them inside a yr of one another, 1988’s Bull Durham and 1989’s Subject of Goals, and each turned out to be blockbusters.
Extra not too long ago, after a long time within the highlight, his massive display profession was flagging, and he signed as much as star on a tv sequence that may air on a channel that the majority People didn’t even understand existed however then, quickly after debuting in 2018, turned the largest hit on TV: Yellowstone.
It’s no surprise that Costner developed appreciable confidence in himself.
However that confidence, in flip, has led him to repeatedly violate Hollywood’s golden rule for film stars: “By no means, ever make investments your individual cash in a film.”
The primary movie for which Costner dug into his personal pocket was Dances with Wolves, an epic Western that got here alongside at a time when that style had been written off for lifeless. After studying the script, he hooked up himself as a producer and star and sought a director and distributor. When potential companions argued for eliminating key scenes with the intention to decrease the movie’s potential value and runtime, and in opposition to having Native American characters communicate in Lakota or Pawnee for one-third of the movie — which might necessitate subtitles — he fought again. Ultimately, he took on the job of directing the movie himself and personally put up $3 million of its $19 million finances.
It was a loopy gamble, however one which paid off in a serious means: the movie, launched in 1990, finally grossed $184 million worldwide (of which he reportedly pocketed $50 million) and received seven Oscars (together with greatest image and director for himself).
In hindsight, that will have been each the very best and the worst factor that ever occurred to Costner.
Emboldened by his success at gaming “the system,” Costner would, within the ensuing a long time, repeatedly put chunks of his fortune — or, as he refers to it, his “pile” — on the road in pursuit of initiatives that the system wouldn’t assist, to various levels of success.
Waterworld (1995), which he produced, starred in and fought for his then-friend Kevin Reynolds to direct, was the primary film with a finances of greater than $100 million ($13 million for his wage), which immediately put a goal on it. Its value quickly ballooned far past that, not least due to the hurdles of filming on the water, one thing that Steven Spielberg had discovered about 20 years earlier on Jaws.
When a hurricane struck the movie’s Hawaii location, sinking its principal set, Costner, whose popularity was on the road, determined to double down. Studies differ concerning the specifics. Some say he invested $22 million of his cash to rebuild the sunken set. He has additionally acknowledged giving up his back-end deal (which entitled him to fifteen % of any gross income) with the intention to maintain the movie on monitor (as a result of, he mentioned, “I simply didn’t need to be embarrassed when the movie opened”).
However the backside line is that nicely earlier than the movie was accomplished, it was being derided within the press as “Kevin’s Gate,” “Fishtar” and “Costner’s Waterloo.” And in the long run, it value $175 million — $235 million, if one contains advertising and distribution prices — however grossed simply $88 million. Costner often insists that it has “paid for itself a number of occasions” when one components in ancillary gross sales. Regardless, it’s unclear if he personally ever bought his a reimbursement.
Years after Dances with Wolves, Costner lastly returned to the director’s chair — along with taking up producing and appearing duties — on the 1997 dystopian sci-fi epic The Postman and one other Western, 2003’s Open Vary. Although the specifics are hazy, it has been reported that Costner put a few of his personal cash into The Postman, which had an $80 million finances however grossed simply $17.6 million worldwide; and that he took no wage for Open Vary (in favor of a back-end deal), which returned $68.3 million worldwide on a $22 million finances.
Then, in 2014, he fell in love with Black or White, a script about racial tensions in Twenty first-century America written by Mike Binder, who had beforehand directed him in 2005’s underappreciated The Upside of Anger, and sought financing to get it made with him because the lead. No person bit — Costner’s inventory wasn’t significantly excessive in the intervening time — so he determined to foot your entire value of $9 million himself. The movie finally grossed $21.8 million, so it’s all however sure that, on this case, he was made entire.
Within the meantime, Costner had additionally begun to speculate cash in issues unrelated to movie. When The Hollywood Reporter sat down with him in 2014 to debate Black or White, he mentioned that he had additionally put “about one million {dollars}” into financing The Explorer’s Guild, a multi-part e-book that he wrote with Jon Baird and described as “perhaps one of many nice novels of this century.” The e-book’s first quantity was revealed the subsequent yr, and whereas there isn’t any publicly accessible info on how nicely it bought, nothing has been mentioned a couple of second quantity.
He additionally instructed THR about two “oil-water separator” companies that he had acquired within the early Nineteen Nineties and constructed up over time since, investing a complete of $35 million of his personal cash. That appeared somewhat on the market, however positive sufficient, following the Deepwater Horizon oil spill within the Gulf of Mexico in 2010, BP spent $52 million for the usage of Costner’s units.
Throughout that dialog a decade in the past, Costner additionally mentioned the undertaking that may ultimately develop into Horizon, which he had been enthusiastic about since 1988. He mentioned of it on the time, “I’ve one other Western that’s about 10 hours lengthy. What am I alleged to fucking do with that? I’ve an concept about what to do with it. , if I had my druthers, it will be a real serial [multi-part] factor. It might come out on Memorial Day [part one], come out on Thanksgiving [part two], come out on Fourth of July [part three], after which come out on Christmas [part four] — 4 inside an 18-month interval. I believe that may be a really attention-grabbing means.”
Positive sufficient, Horizon — which Costner co-wrote with the aforementioned Baird, and finally produced, directed and stars in — ended up as a four-part movie sequence, with Chapter 1, which hits theaters on Friday, set to be adopted simply seven weeks from now, on Aug. 16, by Chapter 2 — whether or not or not Chapter 1 performs or bombs (critiques and box-office monitoring have been fairly bleak). Chapter 3 just isn’t but totally financed however has already begun filming, and Chapter 4 is meant to comply with sooner somewhat than later.
If that appears like an uncommon rollout plan, that’s as a result of it’s. It’s additionally at the very least partly why financing for the Horizon movies has come not from a serious studio (the involvement of Warner Bros. is restricted to distributing the movie for a payment), however somewhat from Costner and a bunch of buyers whose names he has not made public (and who could now want that he had opted for the more and more in style format of a restricted sequence on TV).
Ultimately month’s Cannes Movie Pageant, the place Chapter 1 had its world premiere, Costner was a visitor on a reside episode of THR’s Awards Chatter podcast and mentioned that to understand the undertaking, he had deferred his charges, mortgaged his Santa Barbara waterfront property and put hundreds of thousands of his personal cash in the direction of the multi-part enterprise, which to date has value $100 million in complete. He has since mentioned that the actual quantity of his private funding within the movie is $38 million or “nicely above fifty million.” Regardless of the precise determine, he clearly has lots on the road.
“I had the type of success that I couldn’t even dream of,” he instructed THR in Cannes. “However I don’t need to let this pile of issues I’ve — whether or not it’s cash, whether or not it’s [possessions] — be so essential to me that I can’t take into consideration what I need to do. I’m going to maintain sufficient issues that my household’s going to be good. … I’d prefer to have cash, I’d prefer to have good issues, however I assumed to myself, ‘That’s going to manage me if I let it.’”
To laughs from the gang, Costner — who gave up his involvement with Yellowstone, for which he was being paid $1.3 million per episode, with the intention to give attention to Horizon, and who will flip 70 in six months — then turned and stared at his imaginary “pile,” saying, “Each time I checked out this pile, I’m like, ‘Fuck, I don’t need to lose you. Why am I so on this film?’”
It harkened again to one thing else he instructed THR in 2014: “I achieve this many issues entrepreneurially in my life, and I stare up on the ceiling generally questioning how far out on a limb I’ve put my household and myself.” He paused earlier than including, “However I’m actually in love with the ‘What if?’”