As you know, there’s been a lot of behind the scenes drama surrounding Kevin Costner and Taylor Sheridan’s Yellowstone. These issues led to Costner leaving the show and ending the flagship Yellowstone series with the second part of Season 5.
It’s been reported in the past that Costner will be involved with the final episodes of the series, but that we should expect to see less of him in the role of John Dutton. Well, now, according to a new report from Puck’s Matthew Bellonimay, Costner might not appear in the final Season 5 episodes at all.
On an episode of The Town podcast, Belloni said: “The question is whether Costner is in those final episodes of this season of Yellowstone, and my understanding is that, as of now, he is not gonna be in those episodes.”
It would be pretty crazy if Costner didn’t come back to close out the story for his John Dutton character. What a shame that would be. It’s a shame that they whole thing played out the way it did because he was so great in this show and he helped make the show as great as it was. I hope this report is wrong, but we’ll find out soon enough.
Costner has explained that had things played out more smoothly, the Yellowstone series would have continued with a sixth and seventh season. In fact, Costner was in negotiations for these two additional seasons, and then everything fell apart.
Costner also explained the situation saying there were negotiations for further seasons of Yellowstone and that he had been offered $24 million to do Seasons 5, 6 and 7. But, there were “issues about creative” and that his talks with Sheridan and the series’ producers were him trying to “break the logjam.” He clarified that it was the producer, not him, who walked away from the table. Costner also indicated that he will “probably go to court” over his departure from the series.
It was previously reported that Costner was more interested in focusing on his epic two-part Western feature film Horizon, which had a big impact on his availability to shoot Yellowstone. But, it seems like he still wanted to very much be a part of Yellowstone.
Costner also elaborated on the scheduling issues for Yellowstone that had been cited as an issue in terms of his disagreements with producers, saying: “Somewhere along the line, they wanted to change things. They wanted to do 5A and 5B; [it] affected Horizon. I was going to do my movie Horizon and leave that show, do my movie, then do B. A show I was only doing once a year I was now doing twice.”
With Yellowstone coming to an end, the story will continue with some of the same characters in a spinoff series being led by Matthew McConaughey.
