Yellowstone Season 5 has been a huge disaster behind the scenes at Paramount, but the finale of the massively popular Western show is finally getting a light at the end of the tunnel.
‘Yellowstone’: “The Godfather in Montana”
When character actor Taylor Sheridan pitched Yellowstone to the Paramount Network, no one in the room could have predicted how insanely popular the neo-Western series would become. Initially greenlit as a single, ten-episode season written and directed entirely by Sheridan, Yellowstone quickly became one of the most popular linear TV shows in the world, eventually gathering over 12 million viewers for its Season 4 premiere in 2022. While Yellowstone is enormously popular with audiences, it has received a lukewarm reception from critics, but that doesn’t matter much to studios these days.
The series follows the Dutton family of Montana, a wealthy clan of ranchers led by John Dutton (Kevin Costner) battling to maintain their dominance in a world of constantly shifting business alliances, Native American interests, and soap opera-like family issues. Costner is supported by Luke Grimes as Kayce Dutton, Wes Bentley as Jamie Dutton, Kelly Reilly as Beth Dutton, and Cole Hauser as Rip Wheeler, as well as an ensemble cast including Kelsey Asbille, Gil Birmingham, Forrie J. Smith, Moses Brings Plenty and many more.
According to Sheridan, he initially sold Yellowstone as “The Godfather in Montana,” a good elevator pitch for its combination of familial disputes, morally dubious business deals, and unexpected deaths. Like the Mafia family saga, a single story has now become a sprawling franchise, with numerous prequel series chronicling the Dutton family in their rise to power. Paramount+ has already streamed series titled 1883, 1923, with plans for new shows set in 1944, on the real-life Four Sixes Ranch in Texas, and 2024, with the latter reportedly wooing Matthew McConaughey as its lead.
In addition to the direct Yellowstone spinoffs, Sheridan has also been busy furiously producing thematically similar shows for Paramount, including the Jeremy Renner drama Mayor of Kingstown, Sylvester Stallone’s Tulsa King, Zoe Saldaña’s Special Ops: Lioness, and, most recently, Land Man, featuring Billy Bob Thornton.
It turns out that Paramount needs a Yellowstone replacement very, very badly because its biggest series ever has been cut down two full seasons before it thought it would end.
Kevin Costner’s Departure and ‘Horizon’
While Yellowstone might feature an ensemble cast, it is impossible to argue that Kevin Costner is not the star and public face of the franchise. The Academy Award-winning director, actor, and writer rejuvenated his career and became one of the highest-paid actors on television portraying John Dutton, but it seems that the show has never been much more than a paycheck for him.
In fact, the actor told Dax Shepard on his Armchair Expert podcast that he actually only expected to star as John Dutton for three seasons, saying, “I ended up making five. I just believed in the world. I knew it was a soap opera. I knew we should all be in jail. We’ve all killed people there. And so you throw logic out the window a little bit.”
Costner has praised Taylor Sheridan’s writing, saying, “He has a great ear and he just wrote that stuff really authentically, and it was good fun, and he wrote my part especially well and Kelly [Reilly’s] part. So, listen, I had a lot of fun with it. … It was really good, I recognized that, so I did it the best I could possibly do it.”
But it turns out that the Dances with Wolves (1990) star mostly viewed Yellowstone as a stepping stone to making his longtime dream project, his four-part epic Western film series Horizon: An American Saga. Costner confirmed via Instagram that he would not return for the second half of Yellowstone Season 5, though he has vehemently denied that filming conflicts with Horizon were the cause, calling those rumors “a lie.”
Instead, Costner basically says that Paramount doesn’t have its business together and that he was initially willing to give the production time to finish the series with him. He said, “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.”
Hope for ‘Yellowstone’ Season 5?
Things have gotten messy with Yellowstone. The planned seven-season arc of the show has been reduced to five, and even those episodes have been reportedly cut short, apparently due to behind-the-scenes conflict. However, recent developments may actually turn out to benefit the series’ production, as Kevin Costner faces some setbacks.
Horizon: An American Saga Chapter 1 was released in theaters just under a month ago and flopped at the box office, grossing just $11 million on its opening weekend. The second installment in the series was scheduled to be released in August as part of an ambitious, rapid-fire schedule, which has since been canceled by New Line Cinema. There is no new release date for Horizon Chapter 2, leaving Costner’s dream project in limbo.
According to Life and Style, Kevin Costner has put himself in a precarious situation by leaving a huge show like Yellowstone and personally financing a huge part of the production of Horizon. An anonymous insider says, “For all his bravado, he’s terrified Horizon will bleed him dry, and he’ll lose a huge chunk of savings…but he’s not sleeping well. He’s in crisis meetings over his projects. He can’t seem to get a hit movie.”
Now that Horizon Chapter 2 has been officially canceled, things are only getting worse, with sources saying, “He really believed in these movies, still does, and is taking the news pretty hard.” At this point, it is fair to speculate that Kevin Costner’s moment of weakness is Yellowstone‘s bargaining chip and that it is increasingly likely that Paramount will attempt to hook the actor back in for the second half of Season 5.
While Kevin Costner has said he was out of Yellowstone, it should also be noted that he also said he would only do three seasons of the show to begin with and seems prone to changing his mind. He has also expressed his willingness to return under some conditions:
“If the writing’s there and I’m happy with it. I’m open to that. But I took a beating over these guys not speaking up for me and allowing crazy stories to come out. I’m not happy about that. But if the writing is there, I will be there too. They had first position. I didn’t do Horizon because I was tired of doing Yellowstone. That’s a bulls–t story. I didn’t do Horizon to compete with Yellowstone. This [project] is something I’ve had a long time.”
