Who Is Kevin Costner Today?
Kevin Costner is an American actor, director, and producer best known for starring in and directing the 1990 Western epic Dances with Wolves, which earned him Academy Awards for Best Director and Best Picture and cemented his reputation as a major Hollywood filmmaker.
Over a career spanning more than four decades, he has headlined films such as Field of Dreams, The Bodyguard, JFK, and Open Range, and more recently reached a new generation of viewers as ranch patriarch John Dutton in the television series Yellowstone.
Horizon: An American Saga and Costner’s Big Gamble
Horizon: An American Saga is a planned series of four interconnected American epic Western films that Costner directs, co-writes, produces, and stars in, following multiple storylines during the expansion and settlement of the American West around the Civil War era.
Without a major studio initially bankrolling the project, Costner personally invested a large portion of the budget and pushed ahead with production, completing the first two chapters and aiming to finish the remaining films despite box office setbacks and ongoing financing questions.
Costner has indicated that once all four films are completed and released, they are intended to be re-edited and presented as a long-form miniseries for television, reflecting his attempt to fuse the scale of theatrical cinema with the narrative depth of serialized TV.
Beyond Yellowstone and New TV Work
After his high-profile exit from Yellowstone, where he played the central role of John Dutton, Costner has shifted his focus toward projects where he holds greater creative control, with Horizon at the forefront of this new phase.
He is also returning to television in a different capacity by hosting a documentary special that explores the journey of Mary and Joseph to Bethlehem before the birth of Jesus, offering a more reflective, historical, and spiritual program as part of a major network’s Christmas lineup.
Taken together, these developments show Costner moving from being primarily a hired star in studio and cable projects to acting as a driving creative force behind ambitious, personally meaningful stories that span both film and television.