Costner’s film “Horizon” has received huge box office revenues

“Inside Out 2,” starring an anxiety-ridden character, continued to resonate with moviegoers as the No. 1 film in North America for a third straight week, while the horror film “A Quiet Place: Day One” also struck a cultural chord, generating stronger-than-expected ticket sales.

But ticket buyers largely balked at Kevin Costner’s three-hour project, “Horizon: An American Odyssey – Chapter One,” which was supposed to be the start of a series of Old West films that were once headed to the big screen. Direct to streaming service Before you can hit the big screen.

Pixar’s “Inside Out 2” was on track to take in $55 million, for a roughly $470 million three-week total in the U.S. and Canada, box office analysts estimated Saturday. The well-reviewed sequel is approaching $1 billion in global ticket sales. No film has reached this sales threshold since “Barbie,” which was released in July 2023.

For the weekend,A Quiet Place: Day One“A Quiet Place: Day One” was expected to gross about $53 million in domestic ticket sales — 30 percent more than analysts’ pre-release projections, which were based on polls tracking 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 terrifying invasion by extraterrestrial creatures with highly sensitive ears.

Prequels are risky. Notable flops include Furiosa: The Mad Max Saga, First Omen, and Lightyear. Fans already know what ultimately happens later in the story, making it difficult for studio marketers to drum up excitement, and prequels often lack the stars who helped make the franchise popular in the first place. Emily Blunt, for example, was the lead in the first two Quiet Place films.

The strong showing for “Day One” is all the more impressive given that its studio, Paramount, was recently caught up in a distracting sales drama. The company’s controlling shareholder, Shari Redstone, fired a top executive, haggled over a takeover bid, and finally called it off, sending the stock price into a tailspin. Despite the turmoil, Paramount’s film team expertly eased “Day One” into the market.

Costner’s much-publicized film “Horizon,” which cost an estimated $100 million to produce plus another $30 million in marketing, came in third place. Analysts said she was on track to earn $12 million. (Theaters and studios split ticket sales roughly 50-50.) Costner hoped that fans of the hit contemporary Western series “Yellowstone,” especially those who live in the middle of the country, would flock to the theaters. It has proven to be a pipe dream.

Can Horizon regain its footing in the coming weeks? Citing box office experts, they were not optimistic poor reviewsAdditionally, ticket buyers gave “Horizon” a B-minus grade in CinemaScore polls, meaning word-of-mouth is weak.

Warner Bros. will release the second part of the film on August 16. Costner has already started production on the third part and has also announced a fourth part.

Warner Bros. is acting solely as a rental distributor, meaning the studio has no investment in the films and therefore no financial exposure. (The company will take a percentage of ticket sales—about 8 percent—as a fee for its services.) To finance the project, Costner mortgaged properties in Santa Barbara, California, and secured backing from private investors. He then left Yellowstone to focus on Horizon.

“There are films that beat the odds, break the mold and prove the skeptics wrong,” says David A. Gross, a film consultant who is publishing a book on cinema. the news “In this case, the template is still intact: Westerns are no longer popular, and there has not been a successful Western series in theaters in the past fifty years.”