Kevin Costner has a newfound passion… but he reportedly can’t get anyone in Hollywood to finance it.
It seemed as though the 70-year-old actor was on top of the world during the height of his role as John Dutton on Yellowstone. Now, ironically, it seems as though something that happened on the set of the hit Taylor Sheridan show could be keeping him from getting into other projects.
As you likely know, Costner was written out of the back-half of Yellowstone’s final season. That rubbed fans the wrong way, but at the time, scheduling conflicts were blamed for John Dutton’s sudden, unsatisfactory exit from the western drama.
Costner moved on to his own passion project – Horizon: An American Saga – and that didn’t pan out as well as the movie star hoped (more on that in a bit). So he’s since said he’s willing to do projects outside of the western realm, and according to a report from Page Six, the thing that Costner is most interested in now just so happens to be… deep-sea diving for buried treasure:
“Kevin Costner is on a deep-sea diving binge to discover sunken treasure. He found gold coins and emeralds recently in the Caribbean. Now he’s shopping a TV series on finding sunken treasure around the world. No one has signed on to finance it.”
Why is no one rushing to throw money at a show featuring Kevin Costner that focuses on deep sea adventures? Well, it seems as though the story The Hollywood Reporter first broke has had a negative impact on Costner’s relationship with Hollywood financiers.
As the story goes, Yellowstone really took off in popularity after its first two seasons. Suddenly, all of the lesser known actors and actresses felt up-to-par with the Oscar-winning Costner, and that created some tension:
“Paramount executives were desperate to have Sheridan’s content for Paramount+, their new streaming app. As the seasons wore on, Costner became an increasingly polarizing figure, and certain cast members were growing fed up with what several sources described as Costner’s ‘diva-like’ imperiousness.”
The set was evidently tense from Season 2 on, and came to a head when Kevin Costner and Wes Bentley (who played Jamie Dutton) nearly fought on set. THR says the cast was filming an emotional scene and Costner pushed Bentley to go off-script.
The actor behind Jamie Dutton refused, as he wanted to honor Taylor Sheridan’s vision for the scene. When Bentley didn’t play along, the two apparently had quite the standoff:
“Kevin didn’t like that, and he lunged at him. No fists were thrown, but they were in each other’s faces, pushing and shoving and just getting hot until they had to be separated.”
That was quite the shocking story when it came out.
And it has evidently caused a headache for Kevin Costner. Page Six suggests that the actor can’t get his deep-sea adventure/treasure hunting idea financed because of that report. That, as well as how The Hollywood Reporter painted him in the story, has gotten underneath Kevin Costner’s skin:
“He’s said to be furious over the new Hollywood Reporter story about how he’s lost the plot… He’s very angry about it.”
Rightfully so, because Costner isn’t necessarily in the position to finance the treasure hunting show himself.
That’s because he sank (no treasure hunting show pun intended) a lot of his own money to try and make Horizon: An American Saga happen. The four-part film’s first chapter performed abysmally at the box office, and only made $11 million in its opening weekend. That obviously means the film fell short of expectations, considering that Costner had put forth $38 million of his own money for his passion project, and the first film’s budget came in around $100 million.
Part two of the saga was produced, but it has yet to be released. Though it’s technically “delayed,” it’s been a year since that happened… and with no word on the second installment (or the other two that were supposed to follow), Horizon is probably dead in the water.
As far as we know, the next thing that the star has coming up is a role in an upcoming dramedy film titled Honeymoon with Harry. The two-time Oscar winner will star alongside Jake Gyllenhaal, and the story focuses on a man (played by Gyllenhaal) who loses his fiancée days before their wedding and decides to still go on the planned honeymoon with his would-have-been father-in-law (played by Costner).
When I watch that when it comes out (if I get around to it), all I’ll be able to think about when I see Kevin Costner is, “He’d rather be searching for buried treasure.”
