Kevin Costner seemed to be a joy to work with

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The context, in case you don’t know the story: Costner has had a famously big ego in Hollywood since he was a massive star in the ‘80s and ‘90s; not much has changed, apparently. In short, he had so many demands on “Yellowstone,” and the shooting schedule—much of which vexed the entire cast beyond just Sheridan and Paramount—that he basically wrote himself off the show.

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After demanding more money and that Paramount accommodate his own schedule—he’s been shooting his own movie “Horizon”—Sheridan and a fed up Paramount decided just to kill off his character, the Yellowstone ranching patriarch John Dutton, and end the show so as not to have to deal with Costner anymore. The idea would be to create a new show with many of the same characters but center it around a new alpha male (McConaughey).

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Costner tried to salvage things and spent the summer trying to fix the situation. The outlet reports that, after talking with Paramount brass and lawyer, Costner finally got on the phone with Sheridan, and they tried to hash out their problems (remember, Sheridan has a vast empire on Paramount+ now and holds just as much power as its star if not more).

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while on the phone with Sheridan—asked for more money, asked for more accommodation for his shooting schedule (which was a central sticking point in the first place, and get this, wanted creative veto power over writing choices involving John Dutton.

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In fact, the Puck news piece alleges that Costner already had a “moral death” clause in his contract that basically forbade Sheridan and Paramount to kill off Dutton in any humiliating way because it would reflect poorly on Costner (!!!). Costner is famously litigious (see what’s going on with his divorce in the celebrity gossip pages of People magazine), and apparently, he thinks he’s in the right here and thinks he can sue and use that “moral death” clause part of his contract as leverage even though he hasn’t read the scripts and doesn’t know how John Dutton dies.

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