When Kevin Costner decides to direct something, he doesn’t do small. His first two efforts were the Oscar-winning “Dances With Wolves” and the flop “The Postman,” which each clocked around three hours (with ‘Dances’ going even longer in the director’s cut). His last directorial outing was over a decade ago with the western “Open Range,” which ambles to nearly two-and-a-half hours long. But those pictures will be peanuts to what Costner is cooking up next.
“I have another Western I’ve co-written with some people, and I would like to play out the second half of my career directing more. I’ve constantly given the movies I’ve found to directors who I thought could do it better, but there are a lot of voices in my ear from my family saying, ‘You need to direct the movies you fall in love with.’ So I think I will,” he teased Vulture earlier this week.
But he’s being quite modest, because in another chat with Variety, Costner reveals the project is truly an epic in the making.
“I’ve been working on it. It’s about 10 hours long, how about that? Maybe I’ll make three features out of it. There’s a fourth one, too, so it’s truly a saga. I could do TV, or I could also make it like every six months, have a big western that’s tied together like ‘Jean De Florette’ and ‘Manon Of The Spring.’ I think those are fun to watch,” he said referencing Claude Berri‘s pictures.
We’ve seen Hollywood and independent moviemakers slowly slip back into making westerns of late (“The Hateful Eight,” “Django Unchained,” “The Magnificent Seven,” “Bone Tomahawk,” “In A Valley Of Violence,” the list goes on), but nothing on this kind of scale. Here’s hoping Costner gets the pieces in place he needs to make this happen, because it sounds like it could be pretty great.
Listen to Variety’s full talk with Costner below.
He’s a good director. Dances With Wolves proved that. The Postman wasn’t that bad and I very much liked Open Range. Love Westerns so I wish him well, but I don’t know about 3 or 4 different features. Most studios won’t hang in there for that many and that long…especially if the first one doesn’t do really well. He might consider a 10 hour mini-series along the lines of Lonesome Dove, but I’m sure he’s given that some thought as well.
Just give us a couple westerns, Kevin. Audiences won’t go for three or four movies in a saga and they won’t go for 3 hr long movies. TV minis are terrible and cheap looking….do films
I mostly agree, except for the “cheap looking” part. A Western isn’t particularly expensive to make, compared to other types of film like fantasy, sci fi or action movies with big setpiece moments and CGI. You need decent costumes, a few sets (mostly just wooden houses and maybe a train) and lots of empty landscape. None of that is going to blow up a budget too badly. And the rest of “cheap look” comes from cheap cameras, which isn’t much of a thing in modern TV anymore. I think Kevin Costner could do TV Westerns that look and feel like Open Range or better.
He’s probably got a three hour baseball epic too.
This is exciting news. He has talent and I like the idea of the western saga. That said, if you’re going to make a 3 hour movie, it needs to be good! I have faith. I vote for doing it in film form but I’m also all about Netflix these days. It depends on the script – TV series are written differently. Film is a particular animal. I’d love to see whatever he ends up doing.