The Yellowstone world has been a whole mess here in 2023, ever since rumors started to fly around that Kevin Costner was exiting the show over film scheduling conflicts for the second half of season five, as the famed actor wanted time to focus on his new movie Horizon.
Sure enough, Costner is exiting the show, and Yellowstone will end at the end of Season 5, which we still don’t have a premiere date due to the ongoing writers strike. If I was betting man, I’d say that we probably won’t see the series finale of Yellowstone until sometime in late 2024.
Might as well call it Season 6 at that point…
Of course, this all stems from scheduling issues between Costner, who wants to work on his own Western project, Horizon, and Taylor Sheridan/Paramount, who Costner has alleged is taking their sweet time on getting scripts delivered.
There’s been a lot of “he said, she said,” with some reports that Costner would only devote a week to filming the second half of Season 5.
Costner’s attorney, Marty Singer, told Puck News that this was not the reasoning for the actor’s exit:
“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.”
And now, according to Fox News, Costner’s divorce hearing has shined even more light on the scheduling conflicts, and from his own testimony, it sounds like his story has been pretty consistent.
Costner said:
“Somewhere along the line they wanted to change things. They wanted to do 5A and 5B… affected ‘Horizon.’ I was going to do my movie ‘Horizon’ and leave that show, do my movie, then do B.
A show I was only doing once a year I was now doing twice.”
He also said that he had been offered $24 million to do season five, six, and seven of the show before before the scheduling issues started happening and the show essentially fell behind their filming schedule.
Costner also said that they did negotiate on Season 6, but claims that Sheridan and Paramount walked away from the table, not him:
“It’s complicated… we did negotiate. There were issues about creative. I tried to break the log jam, they walked away.”
Of course all of this has been brought up in court because Costner is dealing with a divorce from longtime wife Christine Baumgartner, and while trying to decipher who gets how much money in the divorce, Baumgartner’s attorney pointed out how much money Costner brought home from Yellowstone.
Costner has argued that since Yellowstone is no more, he should have to pay less because he will be making significantly less money going forward.
Baumgartner initially wanted $250,000 a month in child support, but that was cut down to the original set amount of $129,755. However, it’s now been kicked up to $161,592.
It’s drama on and off the screen for Mr. Costner… meanwhile, fans just want to know when Yellowstone is going to return.
