Kevin Costner’s 2024 western movie, Horizon: An American Saga, has proven its staying power by dominating on streaming to start 2025, despite its lack of box office success. The western movie is the first of four planned installments in Costner’s Horizon series, a western focusing on Midwest America before, during, and after the Civil War. The film was envisioned by Costner as one movie in 1988, before evolving into a series he would direct, write, produce, star in, and partially fund. Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 1 earned mixed reviews from critics, before its theatrical release on June 28, 2024.

Alongside lukewarm critical reception, the movie was a box office bomb, earning just $38.7 million against a $50 million budget. This resulted in Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 2‘s release being delayed indefinitely, the sequel only getting screened at the Venice International Film Festival on September 7, 2024. While it will be played again at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival on February 7, 2025, the release date remains unannounced. This is because of Chapter 1‘s poor performance, something that will continue to influence what happens to Costner’s planned sequels.

Horizon: An American Saga Is 2025’s First Big Streaming Success

The Film Has Found Renewed Life At Home

Although it wasn’t a success in theaters, Costner’s western has managed to find new life on streaming in the last few months. Not long after debuting on Max on August 23, Horizon became a top streaming movie, becoming the Number 10 most-watched movie across all streaming platforms that week. Given Costner leads the cast of Horizon, and the film follows his departure from the popular western series Yellowstone, its instant streaming success made sense. It was added to Netflix at the start of January 2025, offering new audiences a chance to watch it.

Now, Nielsen has reported that Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 1 was the Number 1 movie on streaming for the week of December 30, 2024 through January 5, 2025. According to their data, the Costner-directed film garnered 753 million minutes viewed that week across both Max and Netflix, making it the most popular film for that week. Check out the full list of top streaming movies for the first week of 2025 below:

What Horizon: An American Saga’s Streaming Success Means For Costner’s Western

Could Chapter 2 Debut On Streaming?

Costner’s movie becoming a streaming hit is the perfect way for its 2025 success to begin, especially when Chapter 2 will be screening at another film festival soon. Since it’s managed to garner so much attention at home, its new audience could influence whether the next installments are theatrically released. For now, it seems Horizon: An American Saga has a bright future in its home release, something that could potentially decide what happens to its three follow-ups.

Source: Nielsen