Yellowstone will return for Season 6, and Paramount is done with Kevin Costner once and for all.
‘Yellowstone:’ “Very Much as His Baby — Not Theirs”
By any measure, Yellowstone is one of the most popular shows in the world. While the writing of co-creator Taylor Sheridan, America’s thirst for cowboy-coded soap opera, and Paramount’s relentless franchising of the concept has a lot to do with the rise of the show, there’s also one inarguable reason for the show’s success: Kevin Costner, AKA John Dutton, AKA the big guy of the family ranch.
To many audience members, Kevin Costner is the heart of the Yellowstone franchise. When the show premiered on the Paramount Network in 2018, the Academy Award-winning actor-director was the series’ big selling point; few other network dramas were able to land such a notable star, even if he was a bit past his 1990s high point.
Taylor Sheridan and John Linson may be credited as the show’s creators, but to the public at large, it’s the Costner-in-a-cowboy-hat show.
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Apparently, Kevin Costner feels the same way. Insiders have reported that the actor does not expect the series to survive his departure, saying, “It would give him a lot of quiet satisfaction seeing those guys fall flat on their faces for even attempting to breathe fresh life into the show he sees very much as his baby—not theirs.”
While no one at Paramount or the Costner camp is likely to go on the record to confirm that, the actor does have a reputation for viewing himself as the primary creative voice in whatever project he’s working on, whether he’s a writer or director or not.
Kevin Reynolds, Costner’s collaborator on both Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (1991) and Waterworld (1995), infamously told EW that “In the future, Costner should only appear in pictures he directs himself. That way he can always be working with his favorite actor and his favorite director.” You can draw your own conclusions about what that means about his view of Yellowstone.
Costner shocked fans back in June when he announced (via Instagram) that he would be leaving Yellowstone after Season 5A.
While he was initially diplomatic about it, he has since been shockingly candid about how disorganized he thinks Paramount is and how he tried to give them time to wrap up his character in the first half of Season 5, saying, “I gave them 25 of my days for this B thing in November and December [2022]. What they called 5B. The whole month of March [2023]. I didn’t shoot 5B. There was no script. And then things imploded.”
While Kevin Costner is currently nursing his (pretty huge financial) wounds over the debacle that is Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 1, it seems that he was taking a little solace in the idea that there would be no Yellowstone Season 6 without him.
However, he underestimates just how much the Yellowstone franchise means to Paramount. It turns out that it’s willing to push past Season 5B without him.
Season 6: The Beth Dutton and Rip Wheeler Show
Paramount has not officially confirmed it yet, but multiple outlets indicate that negotiations for Yellowstone Season 6 are coming to a close.
Deadline reports that Paramount intends to go for Yellowstone Season 6, replacing John Dutton as the center of the series with Beth Dutton (Kelly Reilly) and Rip Wheeler (Cole Hauser).
Both actors have been part of the main cast since Season 1 and are considered fan favorites; if the studio needed to pivot away from Costner grimly staring at the horizon as the show’s central image, Beth and Rip soulfully gazing outward is a pretty smart move.
It was already known that Kelly Reilly and Cole Hauser were in talks to star in a Yellowstone project, but the initial speculation was one of the franchise’s many spinoffs. At this point, Paramount must just be sick enough of Costner’s alleged comments about them being “delusional headless chickens” and confident enough in Taylor Sheridan to retool the series around them rather than greenlighta new spinoff.
Related: “Worst Possible Scenario,” ‘Yellowstone’ TV Series Left Behind
Paramount has already produced numerous other spinoffs, including the prequels 1883 and 1923, the latter of which has an upcoming second season. A contemporary spinoff titled The Madison has been confirmed to star Michelle Pfeiffer, Matthew Fox, and Patrick J. Adams, though things seemed to have fallen through with snagging Matthew McConaughey. On the other hand, maybe he’ll show up for 1944, yet another prequel series in development.
Kevin Costner has his own problems to deal with, regardless of what happens at Paramount. While the actor firmly denies that he quit the show in order to star in his passion project, the four-part Horizon film series, it is moving on without him. The release of Horizon Chapter 2 has been canceled, with no sign of when it might get a wide release. The distributor issued a statement regarding the sudden cancelation, saying:
“Territory Pictures and New Line Cinema have decided not to release Horizon: Chapter 2 on August 16 in order to give audiences a greater opportunity to discover the first installment of Horizon over the coming weeks, including on PVOD and MAX. We thank our exhibition partners for their continued support as moviegoers across the US discover the film in its theatrical run.”
Costner himself has pushed the notion that Horizon Chapter 2‘s demotion from global wide release to a single festival screening is a positive thing, saying, “The fact that now [the 81st Venice Film Festival has] decided to show Chapter 1 earlier in the day and then the world premiere of Chapter 2 that evening shows not only their belief in how the two films work together but their support of a director’s vision.
Long live the movies and those willing to stand for them.”
Despite Costner’s opinion that Yellowstone can’t survive him, Paramount is not ready to let the Dutton Family go that easily. With or without Papa Dutton, Season 6 is going to happen.
Will you watch Yellowstone without Costner as the lead? Tell us below!
