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Say farewell to America’s favorite cowboy. Ever since it was revealed that Yellowstone was ending after five season over its main star’s exit, fans have wondered why Kevin Costner is leaving Yellowstone and what happened? Well, John Dutton’s portrayer has a lot to say, and he’s not holding back.
Costner first assumed the role of John Dutton, the charismatic Montana rancher and patriarch of the Dutton family, in 2018. The series is in the middle of its fifth season and new episodes are dropping this summer. Coster recently celebrated a Golden Globe win for Best Actor in a Drama Series for Yellowstone, but rumors are swirling about the actor’s involvement in the franchise moving forward.
Read more to learn everything we know about why Kevin Costner left Yellowstone and the future of popular western franchise.
Why is Kevin Costner leaving Yellowstone?
A source close to the production broke the news to Entertainment Tonight in May 2023 that Costner was exiting Yellowstone after five seasons. Insiders also told the site at the time that there was “still no update on when the cast and crew are going to return to Montana, where the series is filmed on location, to finish shooting season 5’s remaining episodes.” As a result, there had been a lot of “confusion” and “frustration.”
Costner slammed the reports in an interview with Deadline a year after the news broke of his exit in May 2024. “Well, I haven’t felt good about it the last year, what with the way they’ve talked about it,” he said. “It wasn’t truthful. So now I’m talking about a little bit about what the real truth of it was. I made a contract for seasons five, six and seven. In February, after a two- or three-month negotiation, they made another contract. They wanted to redo that one, and instead of seasons six and seven, it was 5A and 5B, and maybe we’ll do six.”
Costner went on to reference his 2024 science fiction movie, Horizon, which some reports claim was the reason he couldn’t fit filming Yellowstone into his schedule. “They weren’t able to make those. Horizon was set in the middle, but Yellowstone was first position. I fit [Horizon] into the gaps. They just kept moving their gaps,” he said.
Later in the interview, Costner also seemed to criticize creator Taylor Sheridan and other cast and crew members for blaming Yellowstone‘s drama on him. “Listen, I don’t want to get down in the gutter with the Yellowstone thing but what I’m telling you is straight up. I have taken a beating from those f—ing guys and I know a lot of times where it’s coming from,” he said. “I just elected not to get into that. But if you know me well enough, I made Yellowstone the first priority, and to insinuate anything else would be wrong. I did not initiate any of those things. They did.”
He continued, “They were doing a tap dance and this poor guy was also having to write so much. And I don’t know why they didn’t stick up for me. You asked me the question, I’m going to answer it. I don’t do press outside my movies. I don’t live in the press, in between. Now I’m promoting my movie. I could say ‘no comment’ all the way through. I won’t say my life is fair game or that any questions are fair game, but this is a realistic question. I will address it. They should have known that there was going to be an opportunity for me to say something. I didn’t have to answer the slings and arrows over the last year and a half, because I’ve just been busy working. They’ve been pretty slick about keeping their hands off; nobody was ever on the record.”
Costner also denied that he prioritized Horizon over Yellowstone. “There were blocks of time that we didn’t get 10 episodes don,” he said. “Basically, we were starting in April and May, and we’d usually go through August. We’d do 10. We didn’t even get 10 done during that time. I only worked 43 days. So that’s bulls—t. That’s a lie. That’s not correct. They sent me away for seven days to go to London, to go to England during Covid, to do [promotion]. They made the contract and they picked the days.”
Kevin Costner’s scheduling conflicts
At the time of his exit, sources told Variety, SOAPS’ sister publication, that Costner left due to scheduling conflicts over Horizon. “The issue seems to be Costner’s shooting schedule, with Costner being available for fewer days as the show has progressed,” the publication reported.
Deadline, another SOAPS sister site, also discovered similar findings. “Costner, who had originally limited himself to 65 days of shooting on Yellowstone, only wanted to shoot for 50 days for the first part of the current season,” sources reported. This scheduling conflict has supposedly impacted the second batch of episodes in the show’s current fifth season, as Costner “only wanted to spend a week shooting.”
Back in May 2023, Costner’s lawyer, Marty Singer, also shut down claims to Puck.News that Coster halted the second season’s production. “The idea that Kevin was only willing to work one week on the second half of Season 5 of Yellowstone is an absolute lie,” he said. Singer also called the allegations “ridiculous — and anyone suggesting it shouldn’t be believed for one second.”
While Yellowstone Season 5 was supposed to be in production, Costner filmed and starred in the Western “epic” Horizon, a four-part feature film picked up by Warner Bros. and New Line Cinema. Horizon had a demanding shooting schedule of 220 days, which contributed to the actor’s tight schedule. Costner told Variety last year that it could take eight months to shoot the multi-film project. The first part started shooting in the fall of 2022, while filming for the subsequent three films will take place in April 2023 “with the trio of titles shooting at the same time.”
Taylor Sheridan responds to Kevin Costner’s Yellowstone drama
The show’s creator, Taylor Sheridan, opened up about the allegations against Costner in a lengthy interview with The Hollywood Reporter in June 2023. “My last conversation with Kevin was that he had this passion project he wanted to direct. He and the network were arguing about when he could be done with Yellowstone. I said, ‘We can certainly work a schedule toward [his preferred exit date],’ which we did,” Sheridan explained.
As for the alleged shooting schedule issues with Costner, Sheridan stated that “I didn’t do anything to begin with!” adding that he doesn’t dictate the schedule. “I don’t determine when things start filming. I don’t determine when things air. Those decisions are made by people way above me. My sphere of control is the content — that’s it. No production of mine has ever waited on me,” he explained. The Hollywood Reporter also reported that there are currently ongoing conversations to try to convince Costner to film a few scenes to wrap up his character, but the scripts are not yet completed.
“My opinion of Kevin as an actor hasn’t altered… 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,” Sheridan added. “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. His movie [Horizon] seems to be a great priority to him and he wants to shift focus. I sure hope [the movie is] worth it — and that it’s a good one.”
The Yellowstone creator did say he was “disappointed” about how John Dutton’s character will be wrapped up. “It truncates the closure of his character. It doesn’t alter it, but it truncates it.” However, Sheridan hinted that John Dutton was never going to be around for the very end of the show, so it doesn’t change too much. When asked if Costner will be killed off, he responded:
“I don’t do [beep]-you car crashes,” Sheridan said. “Whether [Dutton’s fate] inflates [Costner’s] ego or insults is collateral damage that I don’t factor in with regard to storytelling.”
When asked if he has a “god complex,” a term used widely in the press, he responded, “I wouldn’t think that, no, I don’t… But you can find people — most of them line producers — who would feel that way. What does ‘God complex’ mean? I’m very blunt with every single person — the production staff, the studio, the network. I said, ‘Look, I invented this thing that I wrote down on paper and I’ve been entrusted to make it into a story that this network goes and sells. Your job is to try and get me there under budget.’ I don’t know that anyone ever said, ‘Yay, that TV show that got canceled after season one came in under budget.’ ”
The final episodes of Yellowstone Season 5 were originally slated to be released in November 2023, according to Variety. However, those episodes were pushed back to November 2024 due to the SAG-AFTRa and Writer’s Strikes. Sources told The Hollywood Reporter in February 2023 that the second part of Yellowstone was set to start filming in March 2023, but the date was moved back due to drama surrounding Costner’s exit.
Is Season 5 the last season of Yellowstone?
Is Season 5 the last season of Yellowstone? Yes, Paramount Global and Paramount Network is moving to end the show as it currently stands following the season’s finale (which is now slated to air in November 2023). Our sister publication, Variety, reported on May 5, 2023, that Yellowstone will be ending after Season 5 and there will not be a sixth season.
“Yellowstone has been the cornerstone on which we have launched an entire universe of global hits – from 1883 to Tulsa King, and I am confident our Yellowstone sequel will be another big hit, thanks to the brilliant creative mind of Taylor Sheridan and our incredible casts who bring these shows to life,” said Chris McCarthy, president & CEO of Showtime and MTV Entertainment Studios, in a statement.
The network also confirmed that the Yellowstone extension sequel is happening and will be released in December 2023. In The Hollywood Reporter interview, Sheridan spoke about the Yellowstone sequel series which is in talks to star Matthew McConaughey (who is currently in the late stages of negotiations). “He [McConaughey] seems like a natural fit,” Sheridan described. “We had a few conversations over the years, and spitballed a few ideas. Then he started watching Yellowstone and responded to it. He was like, ‘I want to do that.’ And by ‘that’ he meant diving into a raw world clashing up against the modern world. And then I said, ‘Buddy, that we can do.’”
While previous reports said that the new spin-off prequel series will star the same cast of Yellowstone, Sheridan hinted that may not be the case. In fact, it might rely on an entirely new cast and location. “My idea of a spinoff is the same as my idea of a prequel — read into that what you will,” he said of the matter.
Yellowstone continues to perform exceptionally well on TV and streaming platforms. The season 5 simulcast premiere across Paramount, CMT, Pop, and TV Land brought in nearly 16 million viewers, according to Deadline. Yellowstone captured the title as the most-watched show on TV for 2022 and was the most-watched cable premiere since The Walking Dead in 2017.
In response to Yellowstone’s overwhelming success, Paramount+ ordered three spinoff prequel series: 1883, 1932, and 6666. The first stars Tim McGraw, Faith Hill, and Sam Elliott and dives into the origins of the Duttons, including how they came to own Yellowstone Ranch. Set 40 years later, 1932 follows another set of Duttons (Harrison Ford and Helen Mirren) as they navigate the challenges of the 20th century, and was renewed for a second season in February 2023. Sheridan is also working on 6666, another spinoff based on the legendary Four Sixes Ranch in Texas. An investment group representing Sheridan acquired the 266,255-plus acre ranch in 2022.
How much does Kevin Costner make per episode of Yellowstone?
How much does Kevin Costner make per episode of Yellowstone? According to a 2022 report by Variety, Costner is making more than $1.3 million per episode in season 5, joining TV’s “one million salary club” of stars racking in seven figures. Season 5 has 14 episodes, which means Costner could be making upwards of $18.2 million for this season alone. This sum is a big jump from the $500,000 per episode salary Costner made in season 1.
You can watch Yellowstone, 1883, and 1932 on the Paramount Network, which is available to stream on services including Fubo TV, Philo TV, and Hulu+ With Live TV. The first four seasons of Yellowstone are also available to stream on Peacock.
