Fans of Yellowstone, which stars Kevin Costner in it, may have to wait a little longer to see how season 5 ends.
Keith Cox, the president of development and production at Paramount, didn’t give a clear answer at a panel at PaleyFest on Saturday about when the second half of season 5 will start to be made.
Cox was still hopeful that Kevin Costner, who plays the patriarch of Yellowstone, John Dutton, would return, even though there were rumors that he was thinking about leaving the show.
What I can say is our star, the face of our show and the executive producer, are very confident he’s going to continue with our show,
said, Cox.
Yellowstone was supposed to come back with new episodes in the summer of 2023, but Paramount and a Kevin Costner rep did not immediately answer to request for information about the show’s production status or the 68-year-old Golden Globe winner’s role in it.
The news comes after Kevin Costner, Yellowstone creator Taylor Sheridan, and several cast members were noticeably absent from the Paleyfest event on Saturday.
At first, Sheridan, Glasser, Costner, Reilly, Hauser, Grimes, Wes Bentley, Kelsey Asbille, Gil Birmingham, and Jacki Weaver were all supposed to be on the panel at the event, which took place at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood. But Josh Lucas, Dawn Olivieri, Wendy Moniz, and Mo Brings Plenty ended up being on the panel in the end.
The panel happened after a report said that Matthew McConaughey was in talks to star in a spinoff of the popular Peacock series, while Kevin Costner thought about leaving to focus on directing and starring in the upcoming Western film Horizon.
When asked at PaleyFest if the show could go on without Costner’s character, Lucas, who plays Costner’s character John Dutton in flashbacks, said that he thinks Sheridan “always planned on Kevin dying and having other characters die at some point.”
And so you know that that’s just … the evolution of what the ranch is. That’s why when you see the cemetery and you see the names of Elsa and you see the names of Jacob and you see these names, I think it’s of course going to evolve and change,
explained Lucas.
And I think that’s what hopefully people will really like as it goes.
Dawn Olivieri, who plays Sarah Atwood on Yellowstone, also talked about Kevin Costner’s future on the show.
I’ve already been killed once. I’m coming back to life. It happens to the best of us. I don’t know what’s going to happen with him. I hope I get the chance to work with him. I do.
She added,
But I can’t put money on Taylor writing something that we all hope that happens. If you hope [for] something, you might want to bet that he’ll write the opposite.
In February, a Paramount Network representative said that they wanted both McConaughey, who is 53, and Kevin Costner to be part of the Yellowstone family.
Kevin Costner is a big part of Yellowstone, and we hope that’s the case for a long time to come.
Since then, Viacom-CBS President Chris McCarthy has said that McConaughey’s role in the spinoff is moving forward. This will be the fourth spinoff based on the series. Tim McGraw and Faith Hill starred in the prequel 1883; Helen Mirren and Harrison Ford were in the prequel 1923; and the scary-sounding 6666 was also a prequel.
McCarthy also said that the franchise “wouldn’t be what it is today without Kevin, and we hope that that stays for a long time to come.”
