Summary
- Kevin Costner's Horizon: An American Saga & Yellowstone characters both protect land, leading and defending their surroundings.
- Horizon will have an ensemble cast and could mirror Yellowstone's storytelling style with multiple significant characters.
- Horizon & Yellowstone both share a deep reverence for both the Western genre and the West itself, particularly its natural features.
Kevin Costner's upcoming epic Western movie Horizon: An American Saga has been compared to Yellowstone since it was announced, and there are some significant similarities between the two projects. There are still very few plot details about Horizon that have been made available, but the film's two recent trailers have given a good glimpse into some of what's in store. It's already clear that Horizon will blaze its own trail, but it also seemingly took some inspirations from one of Kevin Costner's previous shows, Yellowstone.
The biggest similarity between Horizon and Yellowstone is Costner himself, as he played John Dutton on the Western show, and he'll play Hayes Ellison in Horizon. Costner quite controversially left Yellowstone in favor of Horizon, just ahead of Yellowstone season 5 part 2. He's also invested quite a bit of his own money into the Horizon films, mostly because the franchise is his career-long passion project. Though he left his flagship show, Horizon still bears several striking resemblances to Yellowstone.
How Much Money Kevin Costner Invested In The Horizon Movies (So Far)
It's well known that Kevin Costner has put his own money into making Horizon: An American Saga a reality, but exactly how much has he put into them?
8 Kevin Costner's Yellowstone & Horizon Characters Are Both Trying To Protect Their Land
Costner's Characters Have The Same Basic Motivation
The newest trailer for Horizon gave a quick insight into Costner's character, Hayes Ellison. During one scene, Hayes looked at a poster for a town called Horizon, the franchise's namesake, and declared that it was "a place I might be able to see myself." That set Hayes up to have as vested an interest in protecting Horizon as John did in protecting the Yellowstone ranch. While they seem very similar in that respect, Horizon has also emphasized one key difference in how Hayes protects his land versus how John did his.
What "Horizon" Actually Is In Kevin Costner's Movie
The first trailer for Kevin Costner's Horizon: An American Saga is out now, and here is what the word "Horizon" actually means in the movie.
The trailers for Horizon featured several shots of Hayes firing a gun and engaging in different fights across the frontier. That made it seem like he'll be very actively involved in protecting Horizon and its people, and it also goes against one of John's most prominent traits. In Yellowstone, John and the rest of the Duttons were very hands-off, preferring to allow their ranch hands do the actual crimes necessary to keep the ranch safe. In that way, he was more like a mob boss, while Hayes seems closer to the traditional idea of a gunslinger in Horizon.
7 Several Yellowstone Actors Play Characters In Horizon
Three Different Actors From The Yellowstone Franchise Joined Costner's Movie
One of Horizon's most overt similarities to Yellowstone comes from its cast. Three actors in Horizon also appeared in the Yellowstone franchise. Danny Huston played Dan Jenkins in the first two seasons of Yellowstone, and he plays a colonel in the movie. Will Patton played Garrett Randall, Jamie's biological father, in Yellowstone seasons 3 and 4, and he'll play Owen Kittredge in Horizon. Lastly, though he didn't appear in Yellowstone itself, James Landry Hébert did appear in one of its spinoffs, 1883, as Wade, and he'll play Flagg in Horizon.
It's not currently clear how closely each actor's character will be to their Yellowstone counterpart yet, but there was likely a reason they were chosen for the franchise. That doesn't necessarily mean they were supposed to be a way to connect Horizon and Yellowstone together, though. A fairly possible explanation is simply that Costner enjoyed their work and invited them to participate in his project.