![Yellowstone Season 4]()
Kevin Costner is making the media rounds.
The man behind the iconic character John Dutton, the
Yellowstone patriarch, has been completely silent over the past year or more while various
Yellowstone rumors have continued to swirl week in and week out. Most of them painted him as the problem, however now that Costner's own western film,
Horizon, is about to premiere this year, Costner is talking to press... and he's finally telling his side of the story.
I'm not going to get into all the details, you can read the dozens of other articles we've written on the entire
Paramount/Sheridan vs Costner drama on your own time, but long story short... Costner wanted to work on his own movie, had a set schedule around
Yellowstone's production schedule, the
Yellowstone production kept getting delayed over and over, and in its simplest terms, the scheduling just wouldn't work for either side anymore. Of course, it's much more complicated than that, but in a new cover story with
GQ, one well worth an entire read, Costner explains how it went off the rails for him.
Despite the delays, and his schedule now filling up with
Horizon, which he wrote, directed, starred in and produced, he says he offered to try and show up on set for a week to wrap up the show. But the show wasn't ready...
"The scripts never came. They still haven’t shot it. As far as I know. The scripts never came. And so then at one point they said to me that we don’t have an ending or anything.
I said, ‘Well, if you want to kill me, if you want to do something like that,’ I said, ‘I have a week before I start. I’ll do what you want to do.'"
According to a sidenote from
GQ, Paramount Network refutes that claim, but there was a rumor at the very beginning of the
Yellowstone drama that Costner only wanted to film for one week to finish the show.
Costner goes on to acknowledge that rumor:
“And somebody picked up the idea that I only wanted to work one week. And that has been a carryover thing that I have seen in magazines: that I’ve only wanted to work one week.”
It wasn't much as he wanted to work one week, he wanted to finish the show. But when it became impossible, he offered a week to help wrap up his character in the series finale.
Throughout all of this, Costner has stayed quiet (until now), but his biggest frustration is the fact that nobody from Paramount ever set the story straight. Rumors were swirling, many of which that painted Costner as the villain, an unreasonable diva that bailed on the show in its prime. We heard the aforementioned rumor that he would only work one week, we heard that he wanted more money, we heard that he didn't like the script... all of which Costner says were untrue.
Once again, he never even saw a script (which the other actors have confirmed). So, you have to think... he put nearly 40 million dollars of his own money into
Horizon so far, and it should reach over $100 million by the time he is finished with the 4-part movie series. He was expected to pause all of that and wait around for
Yellowstone when nobody had a script, a schedule, or any idea of what was going to happen? It was just not gonna work for Costner, and I don't really blame him.
Costner says the idea of coming back has been discussed between him and Sheridan, and it sounds like they just couldn't agree on terms:
“Taylor and I know what the conditions are for coming back, and I’ll just keep that between ourselves. And if we can’t get to it, it’s because at the end of the day, it’s unreasonable for them or something.
I love that character. I love that world. I am a person that is very script oriented. And if the scripts aren’t there now, I need to know what I am. I want to make sure that the character lines up with what’s important to me too. And that’s pretty simple. That’s just between, again, Taylor and myself. Can we ever get there? I don’t know."
Taylor is notorious for not showing scripts to anyone until right before you start shooting and sometimes, actors have said that he gives you them piece by piece mid-production. You'd think he would be willing to concede that for a longtime star like Kevin Costner, the star of the show? I guess not...
Yellowstone Season 5 Part 2 should start filming soon (if it hasn't already), and is currently slated for a November 2024 premiere on Paramount Network. At this point, it sounds like Costner won't be returning to the show, and Sheridan is going to have to get creative with the finale... but I guess... we shall see.
Stay tuned...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Wiw1hrPNVg&pp=ygUTeWVsbG93c3RvbmUgNSByZWNhcA%3D%3D
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