Incase you haven’t heard, there’s been some drama surrounding the future of Yellowstone.
Allegedly, the rest of Season 5 and beyond is in jeopardy because lead actor Kevin Costner, who plays John Dutton on the show, requested that he’d have all his filming done in one week for the second half of season five.
It was initially reported by Deadline:
“Costner, who had originally limited himself to 65 days of shooting on Yellowstone, only wanted to shoot for 50 days for the first part of the current season.
Paramount Network has declined Costner’s most recent proposal and instead has made the decision to move on to the other show.”
And on top of that, it’s believed that Matthew McConaughey is set to take his place, continuing the story in a new spinoff series that will feature much of the original Yellowstone cast.
Paramount responded to the situation by saying:
“We have no news to report. Kevin Costner is a big part of Yellowstone and we hope that’s the case for a long time to come. Thanks to the brilliant mind of Taylor Sheridan, we are always working on franchise expansions of this incredible world he has built.
Matthew McConaughey is a phenomenal talent with whom we’d love to partner.”
We’ve also heard news that a delay in filming for the second half of season five is basically “inevitable,” due to the fact that they cannot work out scheduling issue with Costner.
Costner also set aside time to work on his own film this year titled Horizon, the first part of a western series that he wrote, will direct, and is starring in along with Sienna Miller, Sam Worthington, Luke Wilson and Thomas Haden Church.
However, as far as those reports go, Costner’s lawyer Marty Singer is denying all of these rumors and places the blame on Sheridan for being too busy:
He told Puck News:
“The idea that Kevin was only willing to work one week on the second half of season 5 of Yellowstone is an absolute lie. It’s ridiculous, and anyone suggesting it shouldn’t be believed for one second.
As everyone who knows anything about Kevin is well aware, he is incredibly passionate about the show and has always gone way above and beyond to ensure its success.”
The studio also alleges that Costner contracted COVID, which caused delays in filming. But since the negotiated filming window had passed, COVID or not, Costner doesn’t want to make up the lost time.
However, Costner’s team sees it differently and blames Sheridan’s busy schedule for poor scheduling, missing deadlines, and late scripts.
“Season 5 was supposed to finish shooting in its entirety in 2022. But Sheridan, busy with tons of other projects, failed to deliver scripts on time and constantly moved the schedule around, this source counters.
When the Covid delay hit, Costner did charge those days to his window of availability, but he performed exactly as his contract required.”
Yeesh… sounds like quite the complicated mess.
Thanks to these delays and scheduling negotiations, the second half of Yellowstone Season 5 probably won’t start filming until the summer, which means a fall 2023 premiere… when Season 6 was supposed to air.
Needless to say, it sounds like Sheridan and Costner have had it with each other, and it doesn’t sound like it will get resolved anytime soon. Which also doesn’t bode well for finishing this series on time:
“Sheridan is certainly furious, I’m told… he can’t finish writing the 5B episodes until the Costner drama is resolved and his star is either in or out… Sheridan has considered killing off John Dutton before, but this time, as they say, it’s personal.”
Yikes…
So, I guess we’ll continue to see how the rest of the situation plays out, but it sounds like we won’t see the rest of Season 5 for quite a while.
