The box-office failure of John Wayne’s The Alamo draws some interesting parallels to Kevin Costner’s Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 1. John Wayne fronted over 80 Westerns during his 50 year acting career and was happily typecast as a cowboy. He fronted plenty of classics like The Searchers, but he was refreshingly honest about his duds too, such as Wayne labeling Cahill U.S. Marshal as one of his worst. Wayne directed several movies too, with the 1960s The Alamo being the most ambiguous by far.
The Alamo was a project Wayne had developed for years, and he walked away from an earlier movie on the subject titled The Last Command due to creative disagreements. He envisioned the Battle of the Alamo as a true American epic, with the film being shot in 70 mm and the original version running over 200 minutes in length. The Alamo would prove one of the biggest bombs of John Wayne’s career, with the Western grossing less than its hefty $12 million budget.
The Alamo Was John Wayne’s Ultimate Passion Project
It took Wayne 15 years to bring his vision to the screen
Wayne was known for his intense patriotism, often injecting his own politics into his work. The star also felt shame over not serving during World War 2 and made several war movies as a way to honor American soldiers. The Alamo was Wayne’s biggest passion project and the film he put the most of himself into. Wayne reportedly invested over $1.5 million of his money into the production, which would amount to around $16 million in 2025 (via Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis).
Wayne didn’t trust anyone else to bring The Alamo to life and decided to direct it himself. Given the sheer scale of the production, the star initially planned to act in the more minor role of Sam Houston. However, investors insisted he take on a lead role to give the film a stronger chance at the box office, so Wayne played Davy Crockett instead. Richard Boone, the co-star of Wayne’s most violent Western Big Jake, took the role of Houston.
Reviews for The Alamo were decidedly mixed, with critics admiring the sheer scale of Wayne’s movie but critiquing its length and blatant historical inaccuracies…
Richard Widmark, Laurence Harvey and former teen idol Frankie Avalon filled out the rest of The Alamo’s ensemble. The production shot for four months, with Wayne having an elaborate replica of the Alamo built in Texas; this site later became a tourist attraction. Reviews were decidedly mixed (it sits at 52% on Rotten Tomatoes), with critics admiring the sheer scale of Wayne’s movie but critiquing its length, blatant historical inaccuracies, and self-indulgent speeches.
How The Alamo Bombed Despite Making A Ton Of Money
The Alamo would have been a hit by any other metric
The Alamo wound up making almost $8 million (via The Numbers), becoming the tenth highest-grosser of 1960. This haul would have been impressive by the standard of most Westerns from this era, but considering The Alamo’s budget was $12 million, the film was still a bomb. In the long run, the Western’s failure didn’t impact Wayne’s career, and he continued to work steadily until his final film, The Shootist, in 1976. It may have cost him money, but it’s unlikely he regretted the historical epic, with the actor stating of The Alamo (via X/John Wayne Official):
This picture is America. I hope that seeing the battle of the Alamo will remind Americans that liberty and freedom don’t come cheap. This picture, well, I guess making it has made me feel useful to my country.
Since he had remortgaged his home to help finance his passion project, Wayne later took several high-paying gigs in the aftermath of The Alamo’s performance, including a well-paid guest appearance in The Longest Day. It didn’t take long for the star to work off his debts, though he tellingly never took such a gamble on another project again.
Kevin Costner’s Horizon Mirrors John Wayne’s Quest To Make The Alamo
Wayne and Costner went all in on their American sagas
Looking back on Wayne’s commitment to The Alamo, it’s wild to note the similarities between it and Kevin Costner’s Horizon movie saga. In both cases, Wayne and Costner spent many years planning to bring their Western epics to life and only trusted themselves to direct. Wayne and Costner dipped into their own fortunes to produce their movies, with Costner said to have invested around $38 million into the Horizon series – so far.
Costner also cast himself in the lead after actors like Chris Hemsworth showed interest. More than anything, The Alamo and Horizon mirror each other with their creator’s single-minded determination to bring them to life. Neither was willing to compromise on how they saw their films, and both were willing to lose large sums of money to retain creative control. Costner had numerous chances to make Horizon in the past, having previously turned down an offer to make it as the budget was $5 million short of his vision.
Unfortunately, another parallel between them is their financial performances. Both The Alamo and Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 1 were unambiguous flops at the box office, with the latter’s performance seeing the planned release of Chapter 2 being delayed. That said, Chapter 1 has been a huge success on streaming, which should help Costner with his aim to make the final two Horizons a reality.
Kevin Costner Has Yet To Complete His Horizon Saga
Are there more movies on the Horizon?
A release date for Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 2 has yet to be set, while early reviews from film festivals being mixed. Still, there is a growing fanbase for Costner’s Western epic, and they will undoubtedly find second lives on streaming and home media. Still, there is a real chance the star will never see his wish of making four Horizons come true. They are expensive, old-fashioned and R-rated Westerns, which are a tough sell in a modern entertainment landscape.
At least for Wayne, he saw his ambition to bring The Alamo to life and settled for one extra-long movie. Costner’s ambitions extend well beyond that, and while he might be rich, self-financing two further sequels is beyond even his wallet. With Chapter 1 being such a hit on Netflix and Max, there is a chance a streamer will step up to finance the final two entries; another question is whether they will get the theatrical pushes that Costner wants.
If nothing else, Costner can take comfort in the fact he got two Horizon movies made against the odds. People mocked Wayne and Costner for their (admittedly expensive) efforts to bring The Alamo and Horizon to life. While neither is perfect, they, at the very least, have an earnestness and soul that most big-budget projects don’t. With that in mind, it would be a genuine shame if Horizon 3 and 4 don’t come to fruition.