During a June 16 interview with CBS Sunday Mornings, Kevin Costner revealed the one condition under which he would return to Yellowstone. The second half of season five, presumed to be the show’s last, recently entered production.
“If I like the story, where it was going, I would go back,” Costner revealed.
Speculation has swirled that Costner left Taylor Sheridan’s blockbuster series to pursue his passion project, a four-part film series dubbed Horizon: An American Saga. The first two installments hit theaters this summer, just before Yellowstone’s penultimate season drops in the fall. But Costner said his exiting Yellowstone had nothing to do with his Horizon commitments.
“I did everything that I was contracted to do with Yellowstone,” he said succinctly.
Costner’s remarks to CBS are nearly identical to what he said back in May when he broke his silence regarding the controversial exit. According to the actor, Yellowstone’s production team tried to paint his departure as acrimonious and Horizon-related, but Costner said that representation “wasn’t truthful.”
In June 2023, Sheridan gave an interview to The Hollywood Reporter in which he seemed to lay the blame solely at Coster’s feet. “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 said. “He took a lot of this on the chin, and I don’t know that anyone deserves it. [Horizon] seems to be a great priority to him and he wants to shift focus…I sure hope [the movie is] worth it.”
“I haven’t felt good about it the last year, what with the way they’ve talked about it,” Costner told Deadline in May. “It wasn’t truthful. I made a contract for seasons five, six and seven. After a two or three-month negotiation, they made another contract. Instead of seasons six and seven, it was 5A and 5B, and maybe we’ll do six.”
Costner continued: “I have taken a beating from those f--king guys, and I know a lot of times where it’s coming from. 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.”
Since production has already begun, it seems increasingly unlikely that Costner will be returning to reprise his role as family patriarch John Dutton. However, with scripts for the final episodes likely still unwritten, it’s not impossible that he might return for some fan closure.
The second half of Yellowstone’s fifth season is expected to premiere in November.
