Costner’s precious ‘Horizon’ bites box office dust

“Inside Out 2,” starring a personified Anxiety, continued to resonate with moviegoers for its third weekend as the No. 1 movie in North America. The angst-infused prequel “A Quiet Place: Day One” also struck a cultural nerve, posting stronger-than-expected ticket sales.

But ticket buyers largely rejected Kevin Costner’s three-hour vanity project, “Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 1,” the supposed beginning of an Old West film series that would one day star the film. directly to a streaming service before he managed to make it to the big screen.

Pixar’s “Inside Out 2” was on track to gross $55 million, for a three-week total of about $470 million in the United States and Canada, according to box office analysts’ estimates Saturday. The well-reviewed sequel is approaching $1 billion in global ticket sales. No film has reached that sales threshold since “Barbie,” which opened in July 2023.

For the weekend, “A quiet place: day one‘ was expected to generate approximately $53 million in domestic ticket sales – more than 30 percent above pre-release analyst expectations, which are based on surveys that track moviegoer interest. “A Quiet Place: Day One,” which cost Paramount an estimated $67 million to make, stars Lupita Nyong’o as a cancer patient who, along with her cat Frodo, must navigate a horrific invasion of aliens with extra-sensitive ears. try to endure.

Prequels are risky. Notable failures include “Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga,” “The First Omen” and “Lightyear.” Fans already know what happens next in the story, making it difficult for studio marketers to build excitement, and prequels often lack the stars who made the franchises popular in the first place. Emily Blunt, for example, headlined the first two “Quiet Place” films.

The strong showing of “Day One” is even more impressive considering that the studio, Paramount, has recently been embroiled in a distracting sales drama. The company’s controlling shareholder, Shari Redstone, fired a top executive, negotiated a takeover bid and ultimately called the whole thing off, sending the stock price plummeting. Despite the upheaval, the Paramount filmmaking team managed to market “Day One” expertly.

Costner’s heavily promoted “Horizon,” which cost an estimated $100 million to make and another $30 million to market, came a distant third. Analysts said it was on track to make $12 million. (Theatres and studios split ticket sales about 50-50.) Costner had hoped that fans of the popular contemporary Western series “Yellowstone,” especially those in the center of the country, would flock to the cinema. It turned out to be a utopia.

Could “Horizon” gain traction in the coming weeks? Box office experts were not optimistic, citing weak reviewsAdditionally, ticket buyers gave “Horizon” a B-minus in the CinemaScore exit polls, meaning word of mouth will be soft.

Warner Bros. releases the second chapter on August 16th. Costner has already started work on part 3 and has also announced a fourth part.

Warner Bros. acts only as a rental distributor, meaning the studio has invested nothing in the films and therefore has no financial exposure. (The company receives a portion of ticket sales — about 8 percent — as compensation for its services.) To finance the project, Mr. Costner owned real estate in Santa Barbara, California, and arranged support from private investors. He left “Yellowstone” to focus on “Horizon.”

“There are films that defy all odds, break the mold and prove the skeptics wrong,” says David A. Gross, a book-publishing film consultant. newsletter on box office numbers. “In this case, the pattern is still intact: Westerns are not in fashion, and there has not been a successful theatrical Western series in the past fifty years.”