Rumor has it that Kevin Costner is saying "happy trails" to the
mega-hit "Yellowstone" – but fans shouldn't be too surprised. The
movie star has been hinting at his departure for years. Here's how.
For four seasons and counting, Taylor Sheridan's "Yellowstone"
has been cable television's primetime powerhouse. Since its debut in 2018,
the series has continued to set, and break, its viewership records with each season premiere.
In 2021, Season 3's "Going Back to Cali" received an Emmy nomination for outstanding
production design, but it was star Kevin Costner, not "Yellowstone" or Sheridan, who took home the
franchise's highest-profile award to date — a Golden Globe for best performance by an actor.
Whatever the Hollywood establishment feels about "Yellowstone," it's clear it views
Costner as an actor apart from the behemoth whose success he helped ensure. Kevin Costner
is Kevin-freaking-Costner – not John Dutton. And while "Yellowstone" may have
"introduced" him to a new generation of fans, he's the kind of actor who,
at this point in his career, falls into the category of "inevitable discovery" anyway.
So when sources told Deadline in February 2023 that Costner limited
his on-set availability in the second half of Season 5 from 50 days down to just one week,
it wasn't a huge shock. A network spokesman told the outlet, "We have
no news to report," but it sure seems like "Yellowstone" is on its last legs.
The reality is that Costner was always going to ride off into the sunset before "Yellowstone" was
ready to say goodbye, and rumors that he's leaving the show to focus on his own upcoming western
epic, "Horizon," aren't so much rumors as they are exactly what he's been telling us all for years.
In 2019, Costner spoke openly with Indiewire's Ben Travers about making the transition from
film to television, and how the medium impacted his feelings about portraying the
Dutton patriarch. Discussing his character's trajectory and backstory, the actor said,
"I'm not always privy to it [...] Sometimes with [John's] sons or wife or whatever, that's been
really kept in a creative ball. That's a more vulnerable way to go through life as an actor."
Costner also talked about trying to keep a close eye on, and trying to provide
some creative input regarding, potentially inconsistent behavior in the character — and
how the mechanics of shooting the series made that more difficult. He told Indiewire,
"It hasn't been an easy adjustment for me. I don't like it too much."
A major Season 2 transition away from Sheridan and toward a variety of writers made that adjustment
even more difficult. Costner's mistrust of where his character was headed — and whether
or not the audience would follow him there, and why – pops up throughout the interview,
and it's safe to say that in the three-plus seasons since he first expressed doubt,
little has been done to alleviate that mistrust.
"Make no mistake: I love Montana, but I'm doing this for our ranch."
John Dutton is still a monster that the series seems to want to posit as
a hero and sage. There was still time to avoid this chaos back in Season 2,
when Costner first publicly expressed his reservations. In case all that wasn't
enough to prove the actor's hesitation, he later came right out and said what his
plans for the future were — and they very clearly did not include "Yellowstone."
Costner showed concern about the direction of "Yellowstone"
in that same 2019 Indiewire interview, saying,
"If your foot's on the gas, you can run into a wall. Something can run quite a
while if the architecture of it is careful — not explosive, but careful. You can run a
long time if you make things really compelling, but that's a really hard thing to do. It takes
a lot of thought. It's not impulsive writing. It's writing with a lot of extended thought."
Costner clearly had some issues with the storyline of "Yellowstone" — a
series that quite literally exploded in Season 3.
"If it's progress you seek, do not vote for me. I am the opposite of progress."
But if you're still doubting Costner's feelings about the writing on the show
and on the wall, the actor also had this to say:
"I'm going to play the second half of my career out directing, but it could very
well be in television [ ...] But it won't be making it up as you go. The architecture has to
be there. I'm more about that. Listen, a lot of my movies are long. I like the subplots. I like
it when it all comes together — [but not when] it's made up on the fly. I don't trust that."
Not only has the "Field of Dreams" actor expressed concern about the series' writing in the past,
but he's also made his feelings about its shooting demands pretty clear.
We all love watching Kevin Costner attempt to keep "Yellowstone" from flying wildly off its
axis. But the actor is a husband and father in real life, too, and the logistics of shooting
"Yellowstone" often keep him away from his real-life family for long, grueling stretches.
In a pre-Season 4 interview with Good Housekeeping, the actor said:
"I go home every moment I can [...] But this year, we're filming exclusively in Montana,
which makes going home almost impossible. When you deal with two airplanes, it's
all-day travel. If it's all-day travel home, then it's going to be all-day travel back."
If you've never been to the far western edge of Montana where much of "Yellowstone" is currently
filmed, here's an important thing to note: it's really, really far away from everything
that isn't the mid-eastern border of Idaho. All things considered, it's not surprising
Costner has grown tired of making such an enormous sacrifice — particularly when he doesn't have to.
That same summer, Costner told ET that he'd originally agreed to do "Yellowstone" thinking
it was a 10-hour movie. That's long, but not much longer than 2012's three-part,
six-hour miniseries "Hatfields & McCoys," for which he won an Emmy,
or "Horizon," which will be split into four separate movies. He told the outlet,
"I'm down with long. I understand long really well, and it was pitched to me we
were going to do one long movie [...] Somewhere along the line,
they wanted to turn [it] into a series, and you kinda have to look at things again."
"He said, 'Do you want to make a long movie?' And I said, 'The idea of having
a story live a little bit longer with the characters is always appealing to me.'"
Costner said he had his own reasons for still deciding to sign on, but at no point did he say,
"and I hope to stay on this series for a very long time." He did, however,
note that he was, quote, "happy for the show and everyone in it."
And there's no reason to believe he's not. But the bottom line is Costner has his own career
(and life) to think about, and that career already includes 21 credits as a producer,
and, crucially, three as a director. One of those projects – a little
western called "Dances with Wolves" – took home the Oscar for Best Picture in 1990,
and also earned Costner an Oscar win for Best Director and a nomination for Best Actor.
It's not shocking that the actor is shifting gears to do a thing he loves,
has done before, and has already told us he wanted to do again; what's shocking is
that he's stayed on "Yellowstone" for as long as he has in the first place.
"This was never my plan."
Filming for Costner's passion project, "Horizon," began in August 2022. Costner
told Variety that the plan is to release the Western frontier saga as "four 2 hour
and 45-minute movies" that will come out "every three months." So if you enjoy
Costner in his "Yellowstone" mode, but wish he had more creative control, you're in luck.