Cal State Fullerton grad Kevin Costner ’78 is back in the saddle again with “Yellowstone,” his latest small-screen project. The 10-episode drama premieres tonight (June 20) on the Paramount Network.
Fans of the Oscar-winning director and Emmy-winning actor’s work in “Dances With Wolves,” “Silverado,” “Wyatt Earp,” and the History Channel miniseries “Hatfields & McCoys,” can tune in the new series, which features Costner as widower John Dutton, a sixth-generation cattleman and patriarch of a Montana ranch.
In Parade magazine’s June 17 cover story, Costner is credited with “putting a modern twist on a time-honored genre that he personally revitalized. After all, in ‘Yellowstone,’ during Dutton’s quest to protect his property from interlopers, family feuds erupt, guns blaze, horses gallop, cattle (and sometimes people) are branded, property is set on fire and danger is in the air.”
Already scheduled this summer is filming in Utah for the second season of the big-budget series. Parade reports that following his breakout 1985 film, Costner’s “hot streak galloped off after ‘Silverado.’ One of Hollywood’s most bankable stars for the next two decades, his movies have grossed more than $2 billion overall, and counting.”
TV Guide also put Costner on the cover of its June 11-24 issue. Under the headline True Grit, it announces that Costner “is home on the range again for summer’s most breathtaking ride — the modern-day epic Western ‘Yellowstone.’’’ The magazine reports that Costner “delved into American history to create a backstory for his character that includes John’s ancestors arriving in the West on so-called orphan trains, then ascending to cattle baron wealth in the late 1880s.”
Costner earned his bachelor’s degree in business administration with a concentration in marketing at CSUF. Though he was not a member of the Titan baseball team, his longtime support for the Titans led to him headlining the team’s annual fundraiser in 2016. He has returned to his alma mater on multiple occasions to support the players and his fraternity, to screen films for student groups and engage in informal Q&A sessions with them.