Kevin Costner is no stranger to epic projects. They’ve landed on both side of the critical spectrum too. While Dances With Wolves and JFK received acclaim, Waterworld and The Postman bruised his career forever.
However, he’s getting back on the horse. Deadline reports that Costner will return to directing with plans on helming a “western saga”.
Costner explained: “I have a western saga in mind where I’d like to shoot all three as features and have them come out every three months, because it’s a continuum”. This came during an interview discussing the pros and cons of streaming services, an argument Costner essentially sat on the fence for.
He admitted that as a filmmaker he’d like his work to be seen the way they were meant to be – on the big screen – but also noted that platforms like Netflix allow more eyes on different films. The Highwaymen, in which he starred alongside Woody Harrelson for Netflix, would not have drawn big numbers with a theatrical release. Having it turn up on Netflix was a much better bet.
“It looks great on the big screen”, Costner said. “But seeing that story told, with a little bit of reverse engineering on who Frank Hamer actually was, was nice for the family whose reputation was murdered along with all the people”.
Back to his western saga, Costner explained that it’s somewhat a mix of film and TV: “It’s four [movies], and then let it go to TV, and I don’t see why it wouldn’t even be thought of as a premiere there because all the groups of people that don’t go to the theatre can now sit home and go, ‘I’m going to watch this all, in a pure way'”.
There’s no word yet on what the project is actually about, nor where it might air, but Costner did mention the benefits of filmmakers working under the Netflix banner: “no one’s going to interfere with the tone of it by trying to jam it into another rating system thing where we can get a bigger audience.
You don’t have those discussions with Netflix. And that’s really encouraging to me, that the films can speak for themselves rather than have a committee speaking for them”.
We’ll wait for more news on Costner’s western saga.
#Peace.Love.Costner
