‘Yellowstone’: Kevin Costner Speaks on When He’ll Leave the Show

Yellowstone star Kevin Costner has stayed on the show much longer than even he anticipated. On the eve of the show’s fifth season premiere, Costner said he will continue playing John Dutton for as long as he wants. Costner has played the Dutton family patriarch since the show since 2018, and it was the first regular TV series role of his four-decade career.

“I was only going to do one season, but I’ve done this many,” Costner, 67, told USA Today. “I give everything I can to what I’m doing. But the moment I feel that it’s not right, I’m just going to step away.”

Yellowstone co-creator Taylor Sheridan has given Costner plenty of shocking moments that could have been used as the foundation to write out his character. The biggest moment came at the end of Season 3 when John was targeted by assassins. Fans were left holding their breath until the Season 4 premiere saw Costner return. At the start of Season 5, John takes office as Montana’s new governor.

Costner’s work on Yellowstone has not hampered his movie career. Since the series kicked off, he has starred in The Highwaymen, The Art of Racing in the Rain, and Let Him Go. He is now working on Horizon, his first movie as a director since Open Range in 2003.

Horizon is a Western epic set before and after the Civil War, focusing on the expansion of the American west. Sienna Miller, SamWorthington, Luke Wilson, and Thomas Haden Church are members of the huge ensemble cast. Warner Bros. Pictures will release the film, which is now in production in Moab, Utah. Filming could take eight months.

Costner has been trying to make Horizon for about 15 years and told USA Today that the script includes a whopping 150 speaking parts. He plans to make a four-part movie series, with the first Horizon film opening in 2023. The actor hopes to get the four films out every three months.

“It’s a really beautiful story; it’s a hard story,” Costner told Variety of Horizon. “It really involves a lot of women, to be honest. There are a lot of men in it, too, but the women are really strong in Horizon. It’s just them trying to get by every day in a world that was impossibly tough. They were often [dragged] out to these places because that’s where the men wanted to go; women were following their men. They didn’t ask to be in these territories that were unsettled and dangerous, and life wasn’t easy. I’ve chosen to make sure that was really obvious, that that wasn’t easy, and how vulnerable people were.”

Horizon will be Costner’s fourth film as director. His first, Dances With Wolves, was a smash hit that won seven Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Director. His second, The Postman, was an infamous box office bomb after it hit theaters in 1997. Yellowstone season 5 debuts on Sunday, Nov. 13 at 8 p.m. ET on Paramount Network.