Yellowstone creator Taylor Sheridan has spoken in an interview about ending the series, rumors about Kevin Costner being the reason the show is finishing, and what to expect from its upcoming spinoff starring Matthew McConaughey.
It was revealed earlier this year that Costner wanted to end the series, followed by Paramount announcing the show will finish with the second half of its upcoming fifth season.
Sheridan said the actor began to request working “fewer and fewer days on Yellowstone the last few seasons to focus on his movies, which frustrated producers.” Costner is said to want to concentrate on his own Western epic, a four-movie passion project franchise called Horizon, which would see him starring, co-writing, and directing.
“My opinion of Kevin as an actor hasn’t altered,” Sheridan told THR. “His creation of John Dutton is symbolic and powerful… and I’ve never had an issue with Kevin that he and I couldn’t work out on the phone. But once lawyers get involved, then people don’t get to talk to each other and start saying things that aren’t true and attempt to shift blame based on how the press or public seem to be reacting. He took a lot of this on the chin and I don’t know that anyone deserves it.”
According to the report, there are ongoing conversations to get Costner to film some scenes to wrap up his character as patriarch John Dutton. Sheridan also hinted that the character was never planned to make it to the end of the show and that this new development doesn’t change his plans from the original script of the series (back when it was initially formatted as a film.)
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“I’m disappointed,” Sheridan noted. “It truncates the closure of his character. It doesn’t alter it, but it truncates it.”
There have also been claims that Costner and Sheridan were butting heads due to the direction of Costner’s character, but Sheridan claims, “I never had that conversation with Kevin.” He instead says there was an instance during Season 2 where Costner grew accustomed to Dutton’s commitment to his family and way of life before he started killing people. “Kevin felt season two was deviating from that, and I don’t know that he was wrong. In season three, we steered back into it,” the creator said. “And I recall him winning a Golden Globe last year for his performance, so I think it’s working,” he added.
Although Yellowstone is returning in November, the ongoing writers’ strike (which Sheridan broadly supports) will likely delay that. However, the creator has said the series may not end in the previously reported six episodes.
“If I think it takes ten episodes to wrap it up, they’ll give me 10,” Sheridan says. “It’ll be as long as it needs to be.”
Lastly, Sheridan addressed the upcoming spinoff starring McConaughey (which will have Yellowstone in the title), which may lean heavily on a new cast and setting. “My idea of a spinoff is the same as my idea of a prequel — read into that what you will,” Sheridan said before confirming the series as a standalone story. “There are lots of places where a way of life that existed for 150 years is slamming against a new way of life, but the challenges are completely different. There are a lot of places you can tell this story.”
Yellowstone, Season 5 Return, November 2023, Paramount Network
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