New Line Cinema has filed an arbitration claim against Kevin Costner‘s company under which Horizon was produced over alleged breaches to a deal for the period Western, The Hollywood Reporter has learned.
Horizon Series, Costner’s loan-out firm, is in a standoff with New Line over its cofinancing agreement, a source says. After City National Bank initiated arbitration proceedings against both companies, New Line responded by filing a crossclaim seeking repayment from Horizon Series as part of its defense.
Under the deal, New Line and Horizon Series were each required to repay a portion of the financing. By New Line’s thinking, it covered the portion its partner didn’t pay, but City National Bank took the position that it’s owed more.
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When asked, New Line declined to comment. City National Bank and Territory Pictures, Costner’s production banner, didn’t respond to requests for comment.
Costner designed Horizon: An American Saga — Chapter 1, which he directed, co-wrote, starred in and partly financed, as the first of four installments. It hit theaters last June as part of an unusual rollout plan to release the sequel just seven weeks later.
That idea was scrapped after the movie, which sports a $100 million price tag, failed to deliver at the box office, making $12 million in its opening weekend and roughly $38 million overall. In a bid to allow more time to grow the audience for Chapter 1, Territory Pictures and New Line opted to release the film on premium video-on-demand and Max while it was still in theaters, while holding the sequel.
As of last year, Chapter 3 wasn’t fully financed but had already begun filming, with the plans for Chapter 4 to follow sooner rather than later. Costner’s gamble was among the reasons financing for the sprawling story didn’t come from a major studio (Warner Bros. is distributing the film for a fee) but from himself and a group of investors. Under their deal, Costner deferred his fees, mortgaged his Santa Barbara waterfront property and put millions of his own money toward the venture, he told THR last May. To realize the passion project, he added that his personal investment in the film is $38 million or “well above $50 million.”
The fate of Chapter 2 may be all the more confounding given that Horizon ended with an unusual lengthy extended montage of scenes culled from the sequel — a sequence that appears to serve both as a trailer for the next film and, perhaps, as a reel to investors who may be interested in joining Costner on his Western journey.
“I need some more money — I do. I need some of these big billionaires, with f—ing boats ‘from here to here’ who are fond of telling people they’re billionaires to come with me and make a movie,” Costner toldTHR‘s Awards Chatter podcastlast year in Cannes. “I don’t have the money they have and I’ve already made two of ’em. Where are you rich guys?”
