Kevin Costner almost didn’t play John Dutton III in Yellowstone, and his replacement would have completely changed Taylor Sheridan’s show. After five seasons and the ending of Yellowstone, Kevin Costner has become the face of Taylor Sheridan’s most successful Western show. Costner is essentially synonymous with John Dutton III, and it’s hard to even envision a version of the show that doesn’t include him.

As iconic as Costner’s performance in Yellowstone was, however, he almost didn’t get the part. When Sheridan was first shopping the script for Yellowstone, he actually got a different famous Western actor to agree to the leading role: Robert Redford. Had Redford actually ended up playing John Dutton III, Yellowstone would have ended up being a very different show.

Robert Redford Could’ve Been John Dutton In HBO’s Yellowstone

In 2023, Taylor Sheridan said in an interview that he originally pitched Yellowstone to HBO instead of Paramount, and that HBO’s executives wanted Robert Redford to play John Dutton III instead of Kevin Costner. Sheridan originally pitched Costner as the leading man. When HBO told him they wanted Redford instead, Sheridan went to Sundance Mountain Resort in Utah, convinced Redford to join the show, and brought the news back to HBO.

When he told HBO that he had gotten Redford to agree to play John Dutton, however, HBO executives said they wanted someone like Redford, not Redford himself.

Taylor Sheridan: “[HBO executives] didn’t see it [when I pitched Costner as the lead. They said, ‘We want Robert Redford.’ They said, ‘If you can get us Robert Redford, we’ll greenlight the pilot.’

I drive to Sundance and spend the day with him and he agrees to play John Dutton. I call the senior vice president in charge of production and say, ‘I got him!’

‘You got who?’

‘Robert Redford.’

‘What?!’

‘You said if I got Robert Redford, you’d greenlight the show.’

And he says — and you can’t make this s**t up — ‘We meant a Robert Redford type.’”

Eventually, HBO passed on Yellowstone and the series went ahead at NBC as Sheridan originally intended, with Kevin Costner in the lead role. The fact that Robert Redford actually agreed to play John Dutton, however, meant that we were extremely close to getting a version of Yellowstone starring Redford instead of Costner on HBO instead of Paramount.

Why HBO Didn’t Want To Make Yellowstone

Image via Paramount

The main reason Kevin Costner eventually ended up with the role of John Dutton III instead of Robert Redford is because HBO ultimately passed on creating Yellowstone. When Paramount began producing the show, Costner was in the leading role. So much would have been different if HBO had greenlit the show in the first place, so it’s worth considering why they passed up Sheridan’s script.

There’s no official word on why HBO passed on Yellowstone, but there are a few likely reasons. The first is that Yellowstone isn’t exactly HBO’s typical show; HBO has done Westerns like Deadwood before, but the company largely prefers more urban storytelling. Additionally, Robert Redford likely would have had a larger salary than Kevin Costner at the time, and HBO may have balked at the price tag.

Both Costner and Redford were legends of the Western genre in 2018, but Redford had a longer and more critically acclaimed career. With a higher salary, HBO may have estimated that Yellowstone would need a larger following in its debut season than it could achieve, and thus passed on the show. Though we’ll likely never know exactly why HBO passed on Yellowstone, we can speculate about what its version of the show would have looked like.

What Robert Redford’s John Dutton Would’ve Been Like

Had Robert Redford been cast as John Dutton III instead of Kevin Costner, Yellowstone may have been a very different show. Since the beginning of Yellowstone, John was written as a mean, stubborn old man who was cruel to his children and clung to his ranch with every fiber of his being. While Redford almost certainly would have been up to the challenge, Costner is better suited to playing such a complex anti-hero.