Kevin Costner Says Yellowstone Issues With Producers Weren’t “Truthful” Amid Ongoing Feud

Kevin Costner is speaking up (a little bit) about the situation with Yellowstone. 

Costner has a new in-depth interview on Deadline, in which he addresses his highly-publicized contract dispute with Yellowstone’s producers and Paramount. Costner outright called the reporting on the dispute not “truthful” in his response, stating “Well, I haven’t felt good about it the last year, what with the way they’ve talked about it. It wasn’t truthful. So now I’m talking about a little bit about what the real truth of it was.”

Why Did Kevin Costner Really Leave Yellowstone? 

According to Kevin Costner, the issue he had was how Paramount and Yellowstone’s producers kept changing their plans for the show’s run and its conclusion. Costner is currently promoting his two-part Civil War-era Western drama Horizon: An American Saga, and as he tells it, the scheduling conflicts between Yellowstone and Horizon became insurmountable as Yellowstone’s production schedule got up-ended : 

“I made a contract for seasons five, six and seven,” Costner said. “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. 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.”

Yellowstone has had its production and release schedules seriously disrupted in the last few years. The decision for Season 5 to be the Final Season of the series caught a lot of viewers off guard, since Yellowstone has never been more popular. Wen it was announced that Costner was leaving the show as the lead character John Dutton (patriarch of the ranch-owning Dutton family and architect of its continued legacy), it was hard understand how creator Taylor Sheridan would land the plane. 

The 2023 Writers’ and Actors’ Strikes, combined with behind-the-scenes troubles, hit Yellowstone as the worst possible moment (collectively speaking): The second half of Season 5 (Season 5B) will be arriving nearly two years after the final episode of Season 5A dropped on New Year’s Day 2023 – which is, understandably, a massive time commitment for the cast to have made. Costner’s big of context is much more understandable than rumors and speculation of money-grabbing contract disputes, cast and/or crew feuds and the like. 

Yellowstone Season 5B will premiere on November 10th. Plans for a Yellowstone Sequel Series are already underway.