Kevin Costner Is ‘Considering Begging’ ‘Yellowstone’ Creator Taylor Sheridan to ‘Take Him Back’
Knocked off his high horse by savage reviews of his big-budget passion project Horizon: An American Saga, sources exclusively tell Life & Style that a crushed and contrite Kevin Costner is considering crawling back to Yellowstone in a desperate attempt to salvage his career and bank account.
The Dances With Wolves Oscar winner is facing a huge failure after Horizon — the first film in a four-part series — garnered a catastrophically low 29 percent score on Rotten Tomatoes and was scorched by critics. One reviewer called the film "baffling ... with half-formed characters and NO discernible structure."
The 69-year-old actor was so confident of the series' success he reportedly sunk $38 million of his own money into it, and he walked out on the massively successful Yellowstone series amid a bitter feud with creator Taylor Sheridan.
"Kevin burned his bridges at Yellowstone," says an insider. "But now that his world is crumbling around him, I hear he's considering begging Taylor to take him back!"
In fact, Kevin candidly admitted he's "open to" returning to the Western drama, where he earned a whopping $500,000 per episode. But he might be about as welcome as a cattle rustler, seeing how he first started holding up the production before riding off into the sunset, leaving cast and crew high and dry.
As previously reported, cast members including Cole Hauser, Luke Grimes and Kelly Reilly froze Kevin out after he split the series earlier this year.
"Kevin didn't make any friends among his costars," reveals the insider. "He left the entire future of the show in question by delaying the production — and then left the show altogether to work on Horizon. They didn't know whether they'd even have jobs during all of that. It's hard to imagine them welcoming him back with open arms."
Kevin was riding high on Yellowstone, and he was one of the biggest stars on television. "Kevin felt he was on a winning streak that couldn't be broken, and he got into a war of egos with Taylor," says the source. "Things have obviously changed radically."
This isn't the first time Kevin has shot himself in the foot. His 1995 post-apocalyptic action flick Waterworld — the most expensive movie ever made at the time — was a flop. Now, one reviewer is calling Horizon "more Waterworld than Dances With Wolves!"
And that's apparently left Kevin scrambling. "Kevin's looking at a return to Yellowstone to save his hide," says our source. "It's got to be a bitter pill for him to swallow."
