‘Yellowstone’ Shocker: Kevin Costner’s Cowboy Drama Series Ends Plot, Taylor Sheridan Eyes Franchise Extension With Matthew McConaughey
Exclusive: YellowstoneTV’s top-rated drama, may end in spectacular fashion.
Deadline understands that Taylor Sheridan, co-creator and showrunner, Paramount Global and Paramount Network are set to end their signature show in its current form. But they are planning a possible franchise extension to continue the Dutton story, with a new show in talks to star with Matthew McConaughey.
It is not clear which Yellowstone The cast will move on to the McConaughey-led series, but is expected to include several big stars.
“We have no news to report. Kevin Costner is a big part of it Yellowstone And we hope it will be for a long time. Thanks to the brilliant mind of Taylor Sheridan, we are always working on expanding the franchise of this incredible world he has created. Matthew McConaughey is an extraordinary talent that we would love to partner with,” a Paramount Network spokesperson told Deadline.
entanglement of the problem with the root Yellowstone The series involved disagreements over star Kevin Costner and the shooting schedule.
Sources tell Deadline that Costner, who originally limited himself to a 65-day shoot in Yellowstone, wanted to shoot only 50 days for the first part of the current season.
But for the fifth season of the second batch of the current phase YellowstoneThe actor, who just won Best Television Actor in a Drama Series at the Golden Globes, only wanted to shoot for one week.
Costner is directing and starring in his multi-part western epic the horizonwhich he co-wrote with John Baird which landed at Warner Bros. Pictures and New Line.
With Costner playing John Dutton, the patriarch of the Dutton clan, this is a source of frustration for Sheridan and is understood to be causing morale problems for the show’s other stars, including Luke Grimes, Kelly Reilly, Wes Bentley, Cole Hauser, Kelsey Asbille and Gil. Birmingham.
We’re told Paramount Network turned down Costner’s latest offer and decided to move on to another show instead, sources said.
What all parties are now squabbling over is a Yellowstone franchise extension that Sheridan would write with McConaughey as the star. The A true detective The star is currently in talks.
Because the prequel series was a wild success 1883, 1923 And in anticipation of the upcoming Sheridan show, the studio has more flexibility and isn’t as dependent on it Yellowstone As it was two years ago.
The new show will debut on the linear cable channel Paramount Network and then stream exclusively on Paramount+.
It is currently unclear whether the McConaughey-fronted franchise extension will be set at Dutton Ranch in Montana or elsewhere. But the new project is more than just talk, given Costner’s continued disagreement over the amount of time he’s willing to spend shooting the series.
Costner’s John Dutton character resists hitmen, as seen at the end of season three when the entire family is attacked, and shrewd real estate developers try to wrest control of the sprawling Montana-based Dutton Ranch from him. It would be ironic that the thing that would probably hide the character from his beloved spread is the actor playing him and his inability to come to terms with the time commitment.
We hear it’s quite possible Yellowstone The current season will conclude with the second half, which aired its eighth episode in early January, and will return in the summer.
There is already a busy dance card for Sheridan Yellowstone The extended universe.
Prequel limited series 1883Tim McGraw, starring Faith Hill and Sam Elliott, premiered in December 2021 and told the story of how the Duttons came to own the land that became Yellowstone Ranch.
1923, which stars Helen Mirren and Harrison Ford, premiered in December 2022 and is set for a second and final season, taking in the period of Western expansion, Prohibition and the Great Depression.
As Deadline scooped last October, there are two separate limited series on the drawing board that cover the 1940s and 1960s fights at the ranch.
Also under the Taylor Sheridan universe, is the series Bass Reeves Currently shooting, David Wello also stars as the title character, the first black Deputy US Marshal. That time is set around 1883And there’s also a potential separate concurrent franchise extension 6666. which is set at the Four Sixes Ranch in Texas, where Yellowstone Viewers watched Jefferson White’s ranch hand Jimmy Hardstrom learn to be a real cowboy and fall in love over four seasons. Sheridan also has a freestanding contemporary series Tulsa King Going into a second season with Sylvester Stallone, and Mayor of Kingstown With Jeremy Renner, in its second season. Finally, there is the lioness, the contemporary espionage starring Zoe Saldana, Nicole Kidman and Morgan Freeman leading the team. That show wrapped its first season earlier this week. The Land Man, starring Billy Bob Thornton, began production in May.
YellowstoneIt was co-created by Sheridan and John Linson, produced by 101 Studios and MTV Entertainment Studios, and produced by Sheridan, Linson, Costner, Art Linson, David C. Glasser, Bob Yary and Stephen Kay.
