Before Kevin Costner poured his passion and vision into Horizon: An American Saga, he crafted a film in the 2000s that laid the thematic groundwork for what would become his most ambitious project to date. That film was Open Range (2003), a classic Western that quietly became one of his most critically praised efforts of the decade.
Open Range tells the story of free-grazers who are forced to take a stand against a corrupt rancher threatening their way of life. Directed by Costner himself, the movie is steeped in the same sweeping landscapes, moral complexity, and reverence for the frontier that define Horizon. But while both films share a deep love for Western storytelling, they differ in one fundamental way: scale.
Where Open Range is an intimate, character-driven drama centered on a few lives and a single town, Horizon aims to tell a multi-generational epic that spans decades and weaves together countless stories across a sprawling historical canvas. One is a focused tale of redemption and justice; the other, an ambitious saga about the birth of a nation.
Together, they reveal Costner’s evolving vision as both a filmmaker and a storyteller—rooted in the American West, but always reaching for something larger.