Kevin Costner defends ‘selfishly’ casting his son in ‘Horizon’ after awful film reviews

It’s a family matter. 

Kevin Costner is defending casting his son, Hayes, in his movie “Horizon: An American Saga,” as the film gets critically panned. 

The “Dances With Wolves” star and director, 69, cast his 15-year-old son as Nathaniel Kittredge in the first of the four-part Civil War-era Western without an audition.

“I realize there are so many young actors out there that would just kill to be in this movie,” he told the “Today” show on Monday. “And I don’t want to take those parts away from them just cause I can place my own children in.”

“Horizon” currently has a rating of 43% on Rotten Tomatoes.

BBC wrote in their scathing review that a movie, “needs to have a plot, a bit of credible characterization, and a structure that preferably includes a beginning, middle and end. ‘Horizon’ doesn’t have any of those.”

Variety slammed Costner’s film as “meandering” and says it “seldom seems to aim in a clear direction,” while IndieWire said, “These aren’t characters so much as the spokes of a plot in human form, each of their storylines moving as if being pulled by horses across the entire span of the American West.”

The Daily Beast, meanwhile, called the film “a racist misogynistic mess” and wrote, “I’m not sure why Costner didn’t turn this into the television project it so wishes to be. Perhaps he just wanted to one up ‘Yellowstone’ the wildly popular Taylor Sheridan show, on which he played John Dutton, and which he decided to leave controversially. But as a cinematic experience it is aggravating in multiple ways.”

Costner has previously spoken about how “Horizon” is his passion project. He directed, co-wrote, produced, and stars in the film, and he risked his home to fund it with his own money. 

Set during the pre- and post Civil War era in the American West, the movie has an ensemble cast including Costner, his son Hayes, Sienna Miller, Sam Worthington, Danny Huston, Luke Wilson, and Jamie Campbell Bower. 

Costner said about his son, “He’s a beautiful boy, and he’s quiet. And I have not shoved my children into the business.”

Hayes is one of Costner’s seven children. The Oscar winner has Annie, 40, Lily, 37, and Joe, 36, with ex-wife Cindy Silva. He has a son, Liam, 26, with Bridget Rooney. And his three youngest children — Cayden, 17, Hayes, 15, and Grace, 13 — are with ex-wife Christine Baumgartner, whom he divorced in February after a messy split. 

Costner’s son’s role in “Horizon” required just two weeks of filming, the “Yellowstone” star said. 

“But, in a sense, it was a smaller part,” he explained. “I selfishly wanted him with me for the week, two weeks, he was with me. And we would drive to the set every day and he would whisper.”

Despite Hayes having no acting experience, Costner praised his son’s performance. 

“He didn’t have a lot of experience, but he’s really beautiful in the movie,” Costner said. 

“It’s a really complicated scene. In the end, there’s a nobility, there’s an absolute fatalness about it. It’s what you don’t want a son to do, and at the end of the day, you’re proud that he would make that choice,” Costner added.

Back in April, the “Yellowstone” star revealed that the character he plays in the film served as inspiration for Hayes’ name.

“I named him after the character I play in this. My character’s name is Hayes Ellison,” he told ET at the time. “And I named Hayes that character. So I was watching him grow up and I was thinking, ‘Man, I better get with it and make this movie.’”

“Horizon: An American Saga” hits theaters June 28.