Kevin Costner Spent His Strike Summer Fighting Over ‘Yellowstone’

From the beginning, Costner has seen Yellowstone as The Kevin Costner Show, even as its headstrong co-creator and showrunner Taylor Sheridan has maintained ultimate control and the backing of Paramount.
From the beginning, Costner has seen Yellowstone as The Kevin Costner Show, even as its headstrong co-creator and showrunner Taylor Sheridan has maintained ultimate control and the backing of Paramount. Photo: Richard Bord/Getty Images
Matthew Belloni
September 14, 2023

Here’s a fun contract detail that talent representatives will enjoy: Kevin Costner has a “moral death” provision in his Yellowstone deal. The clause, which was inserted during one of his renegotiations on TV’s No. 1 show, lists in general terms the various ways that Costner’s character can and can’t be killed off, including deaths that would cause shame or embarrassment to John Dutton—and, implicitly, to Costner and his family.

Yes, that’s unusual; I asked a few seasoned talent lawyers if they’d ever seen a clause like that, and nobody had. But it’s kinda not surprising, right? From the beginning, Costner has seen Yellowstone as The Kevin Costner Show, even as its headstrong co-creator and showrunner Taylor Sheridan has maintained ultimate control and the backing of Paramount, and turned it into an ensemble drama with many stars—and the anchor of the lucrative, and very much Costner-free, “Sheridan-verse” of shows. So Costner, with his famously large ego and hostility toward those who question him, felt he needed to protect himself against someone with more power. Hence the clause preventing Dutton from betraying his family or getting fatally kicked in the nuts by a horse.