Yellowstone has not ended yet, it is only halfway through its fifth season.
On Monday Kevin Costner – who plays patriarch John Dutton on TV’s number one show – shared some insights to GQ.
The Oscar-winning star maintained that he told creator Taylor Sheridan he would help end the series, but no scripts have ever come his way.
And Costner also said that he and Taylor have a ‘private’ reason for not going forward, hinting they have disagreements over how the show should end.
But the star, who is promoting his new movie Horizon, said that he wants to help end the Dutton saga for the sake of the ‘audience.’
Just hours after Kevin’s GQ interview surfaced, Paramount Network announced that Yellowstone had already started production on the end of season five and was currently filming in Montana.
As previously announced, the series is slated to return in November 2024.
DailyMail.com has contacted Paramount to see if Costner may be starring in any of the new episodes.
As of now, it does not seem as if he will be included.
Yellowstone premiered in 2018 and has since attracted as many as 10 million viewers.
On the show, Costner plays John Dutton III, who fights to save his ranch; he has been compared to a Godfather character because he uses murder to keep his businesses and family together.
The show needs an ending, but there has been talk that Kevin was too busy or wanted too much money or wanted too much say to get it done.
Now he has told GQ that he has tried.
‘That’s kind of my Western ethic,’ he said.
‘I’ve been quiet about the whole thing and I’ve taken a beating out there. My castmates are confused. The crew was confused.’
He shared that he only did Horizon because he wanted to work more, and he felt he could do Horizon and Yellowstone at the same time.
‘I’ve always wanted to do this movie,’ Costner said, ‘and I was doing Yellowstone. I love Yellowstone.’
Costner said he was so committed to Yellowstone that he renegotiated from his original three-season deal for as many as seven total seasons.
But there were delays from COVID, the writers’ strike, and ‘further disagreements about scheduling,’ said GQ.
‘We very rarely started when we said we would and we didn’t finish when we said we would,’ said Costner.
‘And I was okay with that. I really was. I was okay with it, but it wasn’t a trend that could continue for me.’
So he worked on Horizon.
Then Yellowstone proposed splitting the fifth season of the show into two parts.
‘And their big plan was to suddenly do eight now and then in the fall do eight more,’ Costner said.
‘I said, “I have a contract to do Horizon, and I have people and money.” I think there was a belief that I couldn’t get it mounted, but I didn’t really care what anybody believed.’
According to Costner, he tried to help end season five. But, he said, ‘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.’
Costner then offered: ‘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.”‘
A spokesperson for Paramount Network refuted Costner’s account of this conversation, said GQ.
They negotiated more, and then he had only a week before he had to do Horizon.
‘Somebody picked up the idea that I only wanted to work one week,’ said Kevin.
‘And that has been a carryover thing that I have seen in magazines: that I’ve only wanted to work one week.’
Now he has been depicted as the person who is holding back the end of Yellowstone.
‘My big disappointment is I never heard Paramount or 101 really come to my defense and say, “That’s not true. He was going to do three more seasons.”‘
He added: ‘I started off only giving three seasons, ended up doing five and got embroiled in a thing that I don’t feel one person over there ever told the story correctly, ever, about what I had done and what I’ve been willing to do.’ Costner said that he thought that for Sheridan, Paramount, and 101 Studios, who were in the midst of developing several other Yellowstone spin-offs and originals, ‘other shows became more important.’ And he was okay with that. But he wished the story had been told differently, publicly. ‘That’s really f***ing bothered me, that none of them would actually try to set the record straight.’
In a statement emailed to GQ, a Paramount Network spokesperson wrote: ‘Kevin has been a big part of Yellowstone’s success. While we had hoped that we would continue working with him, unfortunately, we could not find a window that worked for him, all the other talent, and our production needs in order to move forward together. We respect that Kevin has prioritized his new film series and we wish him the best.’
Then they announced on Monday that they had already started filming in Montana, making it clear they had moved forward.
Costner said he would go back if his terms were met. ‘Well, Taylor and I know what the conditions are for coming back, and I’ll just keep that between ourselves,’ Costner said.
He told GQ that as far as he was concerned, his terms were ‘reasonable.’
‘And if we can’t get to it, it’s because at the end of the day, it’s unreasonable for them or something.’
He added he loves John Dutton: ‘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.’