Kevin Costner to Screen “Definitive” 4-Hour ‘Dances with Wolves’ Cut at Locarno

We might not be getting “Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 2” anytime soon, but Kevin Costner has decided to refocus his attention on the ultimate western of his career.

The Locarno Film Festival announced today that a newly restored 4K version of Costner’s extended “Dances with Wolves” (1990), featuring additional footage, will premiere at the festival on August 7.

This suggests we might be getting a physical release of this new version sometime in the near future.

This “definitive” cut of “Dances with Wolves” runs four hours and includes around 30 minutes of never-before-seen footage. The festival notes, “This restoration offers audiences the chance to rediscover Costner’s expansive popular masterpiece as it was originally intended to be seen by the director himself.”

“Dances with Wolves” had an unusually complicated post-production history. Costner shot an expansive, character-driven epic that was originally intended to run four hours, but distributor Orion Pictures was concerned about its commercial viability and pushed for a shorter theatrical version. Costner ultimately delivered the widely released 181-minute cut, which became both a critical and commercial triumph, winning seven Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Director.

Because the film was so successful, Costner was later able to restore some of the material removed before release. An extended version running approximately 236 minutes premiered on home video in the 1990s. A subsequent “25th Anniversary Edition” further refined the presentation through restoration work, but the Locarno cut seems to be a different one.

With this new 4K restoration premiering at Locarno, it’s hard to imagine it isn’t the four-hour cut Costner originally envisioned for theatrical release, although I suspect it will more or less be similar to the 25th anniversary one — it will be interesting to see whether a physical media release follows.