Kevin Costner has been involved in a very public standoff with the producers of Yellowstone since February, and according to a new report, the star of the runaway hit show will not agree to return for the second half of Season 5 to wrap the character until he is satisfied with how his character, Dutton patriarch John Dutton, dies.
Paramount Network announced on Friday (May 5) that Yellowstone will return for the second half of Season 5 in November, after many months of delays as Costner and the show’s producers and network argue about his shooting schedule , which conflicts with another project he is producing, directing and starring in titled Horizon . Yellowstone will come to an end with those episodes, and a new, yet-untitled Yellowstone sequel will launch in December, according to Paramount, reportedly starring Matthew McConaughey. Friday’s announcement did not reference whether Costner will or will not return for the back half of Season 5 of Yellowstone .
According to a new report from Puck News , the show’s producers and Paramount Network are so bitterly estranged from Costner that they did not bother to apprise him that the announcement about the show was coming. The Oscar winner has still not committed to the end of Season 5, and according to Puck’s sources, one sticking point for Costner — whose role as John Dutton has made him one of the highest-paid actors on television with a reported $1.3 million per episode of Yellowstone — is that he wants to know and be “comfortable with” the way he’s written out of the show. Another recent report suggested John Dutton’s death would take place early in the second half of Season 5, with the rest of the episodes playing out the ramifications.
Puck also reports that Yellowstone co-creator and writer Taylor Sheridan had been working on scripts for the end of Season 5 before the Hollywood writers strike , which he wrote “with flexibility to allow for various levels of Costner involvement (or non -involvement).”
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