Legendary director and actor Kevin Costner’s longtime passion project, “Horizon: An American Saga Chapter One” releases this week, bringing together the hopes, dreams, and even prayers of the Academy Award winner who carried the idea for more than 30 years. The Western epic, also starring Sienna Miller, Sam Worthington, Abbey Lee, Luke Wilson, Will Patton, Ella Hunt, Isabelle Furhman, Jena Malone, and Michael Rooker, is the first of four films focused on Americans settling in the West from 1861-1865.

Costner, who won Best Picture and Best Director, for the Civil War drama “Dances with Wolves” in 1990, has enjoyed a highly-decorated career since then, leading box office hits such as “JFK,” “The Bodyguard” and “Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves,” but “Horizon” was one he was willing to wager so much of the resources he accumulated for, reportedly $38 million. He said the price of pursuing his longtime dream was worth it.

“There finally came a moment where I looked at the wonderful things that I’ve been able to acquire in my life that were external to my being able to survive and I thought ‘Well, I’ll risk those to do that’,” he said. “Because I don’t want (them) to control my life so much that I can’t bear the thought of losing them. I don’t want to lose them. But I’d also like to live a life where I feel like I answered the call to my dreams.”

He likened this thrilling and unpredictable experience to his own personal “journey west.” Like many of the early settlers looking for hope and guidance, he also turned to God for divine assistance.

“The thing about prayer is—if you have a belief and faith—really, it’s not on your time,” he said. “You can pray for what you want. But it comes in its own time, is and that’s the difficulty of being mortal. That’s the difficulty of being human, to go, ‘Well, I can’t wait.’ But I could wait. I just had to keep working towards what I wanted to do. And it didn’t matter what door that was shutting.”

Now that Chapter One is releasing, introducing multiple characters grappling with the dangers and opportunities of the old west, Costner said he was grateful that “God allowed me to get these first two films done.” “Horizon,” he said, is “exactly what I wanted it to be,” a capstone of his film legacy.

“It will be that way ten years from now, when someone looks at it, and two years from now … or when someone looks at all four back-to-back,” he said. “I will have invested in the nuance, the smallest detail the behavior of people, tied up the storylines, subplots that will be a complete document that’s really fun to visit. And I’ll feel good about that being part of my film legacy.”

As the classic black and white westerns starring such luminaries as John Wayne and Gary Cooper were integral to the rise of Hollywood in its golden age and Costner firmly established as one of its modern icons, he agrees that audiences still have a tender spot for a good western.

“A good one creates all the kind of dread and threat that the West had to offer when you’re at a place where there’s no law, where the land is being contested. at a place where there’s no law, where the land is being contested, where if someone’s bigger and stronger than you, they can take the good thing that you have built for your family in the wink of an eye, and there’s no one to stop it” he added.

For the world he’s building over the course of the four films, Costner said the journey for the audiences will be worth it, while the characters will endure even more suffering.

“I’ve seen the second film, just two days ago, and it’s just as good as the first,” he said. “But the truth is, it gets harder for them. And I prefer it that way, because it (bring us) to what was probably the truth.”

“Horizon: An American Saga Chapter One,” written and directed by and starring Kevin Costner, releases June 28 and from New Line Cinema and Territory Pictures. Watch an interview with Kevin Costner and DeWayne Hamby below.