Guys, Kevin Costner seems seriously f*cking mad! In a new expletive-sprinkled interview with Deadline, the star and filmmaker spilled a giant cowboy-hat-shaped mug of tea over Yellowstone’s behind-the-scenes production woes; he also offered his thoughts on the value of DVDs in today’s media landscape, but it was mostly about the Yellowstone stuff. In previous coverage, Costner has been painted as a complete divo, demanding to have a say in how his character dies and refusing to work more than a week on Yellowstone’s fifth season — prioritizing instead his four-part passion project Horizon, the first installment of which he brings to Cannes this year. “I don’t do press outside my movies. I don’t live in the press, in between,” he explained to Deadline as he explained why he hadn’t yet offered his full side of the story. “Now I’m promoting my movie.” And with that, the Costner Revenge Press Tour begins.
On Yellowstone’s production-schedule chaos:
“[E]verybody lives with a contract and they were comfortable signing. Two companies have to sign the contract they signed with me. I’m a single person. I signed the contract. And I’m not a person who is [inflexible]; every season we didn’t start on time and every season we went over. I dealt with that through seasons one, two, three and four, and didn’t say a word.”
“If you aren’t going to really start when you say you’re going to start and you’re going to fudge at the end — I understand production, I get that perfectly. Writing is really hard. I get it.”
On coverage in the press:
“I have taken a beating from those f*cking guys and I know a lot of times where it’s coming from. I just elected not to get into that. But if you know me well enough, I made Yellowstone the first priority, and to insinuate anything else would be wrong.”
On whether he’d talked to Taylor Sheridan “man to man”:
“Well, we did on the first one, and that’s why I signed it to do February. And then we weren’t doing that, and [Season 5] went from 10 episodes down to eight. So don’t talk to me about man-to-man. I was straight up with him and he said what we would do and I believed him and we didn’t get there.”
On Horizon making him unavailable to shoot a full season of Yellowstone:
“That’s not true. There were blocks of time that we didn’t get 10 episodes done. Basically, we were starting in April and May, and we’d usually go through August. We’d do 10. We didn’t even get 10 done during that time. I only worked 43 days. So that’s bullsh*t. That’s a lie. That’s not correct. They sent me away for seven days to go to London, to go to England during COVID, to do [promotion]. They made the contract and they picked the days.”
On Francis Ford Coppolla also bringing a self-financed passion project to Cannes this year:
“He finished his? That’s great.”
On whether he did Horizon to compete with Yellowstone:
“That’s a bullsh*t story. I didn’t do Horizon to compete with Yellowstone. This is something I’ve had a long time. Taylor read that script three years earlier when he was contemplating other writers [for Yellowstone]. I said, well, you can look at what John [Baird] and I did, not that I think I’m qualified. I think you write Yellowstone beautifully. So, he read that and knew what the thing was about.”
On claims he would only work one week on Yellowstone’s final season:
“There were no scripts. I said, ‘Look, if you want to end this elegantly, the best I can do is give you a week. And if you can figure out a storyline …’ I’m usually working six or seven days per each, whatever they are. And they took that and a source on their side spun that into, well, he only wants to work a week for a whole season. Do you think that’s who I am? I’ve never missed a day of work. I’ve never left before fulfilling my contractual obligations. A lot of times, I stay as much as I can. In fact, I worked the nine-day stretch just to try to help them in July, when I was starting [Horizon] August 1. I worked a Saturday and Sunday for them, and they still needed four more days.”
On Taylor Sheridan being really busy:
“That is fine, but they were silent and that bothered me in the world of how you do things. Why don’t you stick up for me? I went and sold this thing for you. I was going to only do one season. I made it for three. I fulfilled three. So, I went from one to three, then I did a fourth one for them and they wanted to do three more. So, I made the contract to do that. They imploded.”
On DVDs:
“DVD is not dead, at all. That’s what they’d have you believe. Maybe it’s not making the same amount of money, but just try to go ask for that from the studio. They won’t give that up.”
On when he plans to start shooting the third Horizon film:
“I wanted to start April 25, but I’ve got to find the money. I wanted to start May 6, but I needed to find the money. I’ve moved myself to May 13, and I’m going to start my movie. I don’t give a sh*t now. I’m just going to start it.”
