Horizon: Chapter 2 Is Missing—What’s Really Going On?
More than a year after its planned theatrical bow, the finished Horizon: Chapter 2 is still gathering dust on the shelf, leaving fans asking what’s keeping it from the big screen.
So, where the heck is Kevin Costner's Horizon: Chapter 2? Short version: it exists, it has screened, and it is stuck in release limbo while the money and marketing math gets sorted. Here is the longer, messier story.
How we got here
Horizon is Costner's decades-long passion project. He has been chipping away at the script since 1988, he named his youngest son Hayes after the character he planned to play, and he eventually expanded the thing into a five-part saga. Westerns are notoriously tough to finance, so he did what most stars do not: he largely bankrolled the first two movies himself.
Costner's history with the genre is a rollercoaster. Dances with Wolves was a phenomenon and won him a couple of Oscars. Wyatt Earp was expensive and did not land. Open Range worked because it was comparatively thrifty. The Postman (1997) dinged his career for years, then Yellowstone brought him roaring back. With that renewed clout, he finally took the Horizon swing.
The flop that set off the chain reaction
Horizon: Chapter One opened in summer 2024 and fell flat. It pulled in about $29 million domestically on a production budget of at least $50 million before marketing, and only about $5 million overseas. Costner did the publicity gauntlet, but a lot of the chatter got hijacked by his rough Yellowstone exit, where John Dutton was killed off-screen. None of that helped.
The sequel was dated for August 2024. It never showed. The persistent industry rumor is that Warner Bros. was only handling distribution, not spending on marketing for Chapter 2, and Costner pulled the release to let Chapter One find an audience on streaming first, with the hope of building momentum for a theatrical push later.
What actually exists right now
Chapter 2 is finished. It played the Venice Film Festival to positive notices, then screened at the Santa Barbara Film Festival in January. Quentin Tarantino caught it there and later praised it on his Video Archives Podcast — it even sent him on a vintage western bender for several episodes after.
Chapter 3: half-built and waiting
Some of Chapter 3 has been shot, but it is unclear how much, partly because the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes scrambled schedules. The plan was to resume filming in the spring, but that seems tied to what happens with Chapter 2.
On the inside-baseball front, multiple lawsuits over unpaid fees have been filed, suggesting the financing web behind the scenes got complicated. Some of those cases have reportedly begun to settle, but Costner is still said to be chasing the money needed to finish Chapter 3.
Release options on the table
Costner has consistently said he wants these in theaters. That said, Horizon has been performing well on Max and Netflix, and Yellowstone's popularity is still massive. If he wanted to pivot, he could likely:
- Drop Chapter 2 directly to streaming (and maybe secure financing for Chapter 3 that way)
- Recut the saga into a limited series — he shot in a flat 1.85:1 frame, which plays nicely at home
- Do a hybrid: a limited theatrical event release (think Fathom Events, which recently teamed with Warner Bros. on Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story) alongside streaming
So... when do we see Chapter 2?
No date yet. The first Horizon ends with a trailer for Chapter 2, which makes this stall even weirder. Given the box office for Chapter One, it feels unlikely Chapter 2 gets the same kind of wide theatrical rollout unless the numbers make sudden sense. But I would not be shocked by a streaming-first plan with a targeted theatrical window to keep Costner's big-screen preference intact.
My read
As someone who actually liked Chapter One, I hope Chapter 2 sees daylight sooner rather than later, and that Costner finds a way to finish the saga without sanding off what makes it his. The audience clearly exists at home — the question is whether the release strategy catches up.
What do you think happens to Horizon: Chapter 2 — streaming, limited theatrical, or a long wait for the full-court theatrical press? Tell me in the comments.