Kevin Costner Confirms His Yellowstone Days Are Over — Watch

Andy Swift
·3-min read
Kevin Costner Confirms His Yellowstone Days Are Over — Watch

It is now double-secret official: Kevin Costner says he won’t be returning to Yellowstone, ever.

Costner made the proclamation in an Instagram video posted late Thursday — hours after the lonnnng-delayed back half of Yellowstone Season 5 finally got a precise premiere date — bringing to a close an exhausting and often-circular 17 months’ worth of rumors, he said/they said, and speculation.

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“I just want to reach out and let you know that after this long year-and-a-half of working on Horizon, and doing all the things that that’s required, and thinking about Yellowstone, that beloved series that I love, that I know you love…. I just realized that I’m not going to be able to continue, Season 5B or into the future,” Costner shares in the video below, alluding to his big-screen Western franchise, Horizon: An American Saga, which will his theaters with “Chapter 1” next Friday, June 28.

“[Yellowstone] was something that really changed me,” he goes on to say. “I loved it, and I know you loved it, and I just wanted to let you know that I won’t be returning. I love the relationship we’ve been able to develop, and I’ll see you at the movies.”

Reports of Costner’s Yellowstone status being in flux amid alleged “disagreements over shooting schedules” first surfaced in February 2023. Since then, there have been myriad reports and sound bites, from both sides.

At one point, Costner reportedly proposed a one-week-only work schedule, which Paramount Network declined; Costner has since explained that when he found himself with a free week, he offered it to Yellowstone, “and somebody picked up the idea that I only wanted to work one week. And that has been a carryover thing that I have seen in magazines: that I’ve only wanted to work one week.”

Before the writers’ strike began in May 2023, series co-creator Taylor Sheridan had finished scripts for the back half of Season 5 that did not include Costner, seeing as the decision to split Season 5 into two halves interfered with production on Horizon.

“Their big plan was to suddenly do eight [episodes] now and then in the fall do eight more,” Costner told GQ recently. “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 the writer-director-star managed to pull it off.

Even amid reports of his behind-the-scenes tension with Sheridan, Costner said as recently as April that he’d “love” to do more Yellowstone, if “I feel really comfortable with it.”

Alas, that return is not to be.

Are you disappointed that Costner won’t be back on Yellowstone? Are you at all surprised? Drop a comment with your thoughts below.

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