With the SAG-AFTRA strike now over, Yellowstone can finally resume production on the back half of Season 5, which will bring the flagship series to a close. Taylor Sheridan probably didn’t plan to bring this Western series to a close this early, but a dispute with Kevin Costner led to the prolific TV creator to pull the plug early and move on to a new Yellowstone series starring Matthew McConaughey.
According to Variety, Yellowstone Season 5 will start filming the Part 2 episodes in late Spring 2024. That should give the show enough time to still hit its previously announced November 2024 release date. As for Kevin Costner’s involvement in the final episodes, as of this writing, the actor is reportedly not returning to the show.
Esquire reports that Puck writer Matthew Belloni recently said the following on his The Town podcast. “My understanding is that, as of now, he is not gonna be in those episodes.” Belloni also reported back in September that a phone call between Sheridan and Costner most likely doomed the actor’s return. Costner reportedly wanted “the right to review, approve, and potentially veto every Sheridan script,” which did not sit well with the Yellowstone creator who has refused to work with a writer’s room and scripts each episode himself.
As for how Sheridan will address Costner’s absence will be tricky. The actor reportedly has a clause in his contract that limits the way Sheridan can kill off his character John Dutton. The Yellowstone patriarch can’t die in a way that “would cause shame or embarrassment to John Dutton — and, implicitly, to Costner and his family.”
(Via Variety)