Kevin Costner was reported earlier this summer to be leaving his hit Paramount+ series Yellowstone ahead of the second half of its fifth — and now final — season.
But a new report claims that Costner and his representatives spent much of his downtime over the summer amid the ongoing WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes in negotiation with Paramount and showrunner Taylor Sheridan to get him back on the show.
According to Puck News, the 68-year-old actor — who has been engaged in a brutal divorce from Christine Baumgartner in recent months — even wanted to stick around on the show for a potential sixth and seventh season if Sheridan, who has written every episode of the show since season three, was willing to give him another chance.
But Costner’s whirlwind negotiations reportedly came to nothing after he made a series of demands on a disastrous phone call with Sheridan.
The deal-breaking request was allegedly that he be given veto power over Sheridan’s scripts, something the showrunner couldn’t abide by, though Costner also reportedly has a ‘moral death’ clause in his Yellowstone contract that severely limits the way his character John Dutton could be killed off.
Earlier this year, Costner had been negotiating with Paramount over his requests to reduce his work schedule for Yellowstone season 5B, as he was set to direct the first installment of his four-part Western film series Horizon around the same time.
Costner, who has now finished principal production on that film, had also requested more control over scripts, particularly in regards to his character’s arc.
However, 101 Studios, which produces Yellowstone, and Paramount, it’s distributor, ended the negotiations in May of this year and simply announced that Costner would not be returning for season 5B.
Instead, the series will reportedly transition to a newly titled continuation, with Matthew McConaughey joining the fold in a new lead role.
After Costner was shut out of the second half of season five, his producing partner Rod Lake got in touch with Paramount Media Networks and MTV Entertainment Studios COO Keyes Hill-Edgar to request an urgent meeting in New York, according to two sources.
Lake made it clear that Costner desperately wanted to finish his original run on the series and to give fans what they were clamoring for, though he reportedly also saw his return to Yellowstone as a way to promote his Horizon films, which he made for Warner Bros.
Lake apparently made some progress with Hill-Edgar and convinced him to get Sheridan on the phone with Costner to iron out their differences.
Sheridan had already written scripts for season 5B that wrote out Costner’s character, but he was game to rewrite them after the strike if he and the star could work out an arrangement.
The two reportedly chatted on the phone in early July, but the call soured their already strained relations.
Costner — who was described as ‘speaking in a friendly tone’ — reportedly asked for more money and less shooting time.
However, it was his demand to see Sheridan’s scripts in advance and to either approve or potentially veto them that got the writer and director’s blood boiling.
Although Sheridan has been criticized for allegedly spreading himself too thin with multiple shows for Paramount and Paramount+ that he largely writes, directs and showruns himself, he wasn’t willing to cede that creative control to his star.
Paramount reportedly sided with Sheridan and ended the discussions shortly after the counterproductive phone call.
However, sources claimed that Paramount Media Networks CEO Chris McCarthy was still open to finding a way for Costner to return, and he hoped that as the writers and actors strikes drag on they would be able to come to an agreement.
However, Costner lost any goodwill at the network when he in court during a divorce hearing on September 1 that he might sue for wages he had expected for season 5B.
But sources claimed that he had already been paid for both halves of season 5, and that he may have been referring to two more potential seasons that he had hoped to film afterward.
Costner reportedly believed that Paramount was in breach for offering him a package to stick around for seasons 6 and 7 backing out, though a source close to the production claimed that the studio had ‘officially’ ended its offer.
Costner’s team now apparently believes that Sheridan’s plans to kill off his character may violate his ‘moral death’ contract provision.
The clause states that his character John Dutton cannot be killed off in any way that brings shame to his character’s family, which would presumably also embarrass the JFK star.
However, sources close to the show disputed that Sheridan would run afoul of the clause, and they said that Costner had never read any details on how the showrunner planned to dispatch Dutton.
Although the ‘moral death’ clause was described as being an outlier by Paramount, other film stars have previously tried to ensure that their characters are seen in the most positive light possible.
Back in 2019, the Wall Street Journal reported that Fast & Furious series stars Vin Diesel, Dwayne Johnson and Jason Statham all have clauses in their contracts requiring that any on-screen fights they have not be too lopsided in favor of the villain, and filmmakers aren’t allowed to show the actors being severely injured, presumably for fear of hurting their pride and macho image.
Despite its desire to keep Costner in the fold, Paramount has seemingly gotten used to the idea of a John Dutton–free series. Viewer studies the network conducted throughout the shows run reportedly showed that Costner and his character were big topics of discussion on social media, but they had considerably shrunk by later seasons, which also coincided with more secondary characters being added to the ensemble melodrama.
Another obstacle to Costner returning is that Matthew McConaughey is reportedly ready to join the fold, even though he has not signed an official contract for the new show.
Sheridan already has a batch of season 5B scripts without John Dutton, so the show could quickly go into production as soon as the writers and actors strikes against the AMPTP have been resolved.