Kevin Costner got his breakthrough in the industry with many successful hits in the late 80s that made him a household name. After appearing in various roles in films like Chasing Dreams, Table for Five, and Silverado, Costner gained prominence as the lead of Brian de Palma’s crime drama The Untouchables.
The actor’s star power rose with the back-to-back successes of No Way Out, Field of Dreams, and Bull Durham. After that, Costner wanted to write and direct a passion project that he had, which ultimately became 1990’s Dances With Wolves. However, that meant turning down another high-profile film that would have paid him an insane paycheck he could have only dreamt of.
Kevin Costner Turned Down The Hunt for Red October To Make Dances With Wolves
By the end of the 80s, Hollywood had seen a new superstar in the form of Kevin Costner. The Yellowstone star seemed unstoppable ever since his breakthrough performance in The Untouchables. The actor was giving hits consistently, however, he had bigger plans for his career as he entered the 90s.
With the success he achieved in the late 80s, Costner wrote, produced, and directed the Western drama film Dances With Wolves. In an interview with GQ, the actor revealed that he had been offered a lot of money to star in the spy thriller The Hunt For Red October, directed by John McTiernan at the time.
The Bull Durham star was in awe of the amount of money he was offered to do the film, which went on to star Sean Connery and Alec Baldwin. However, the Yellowstone star ultimately turned down the lucrative offer as he had set his mind on making his passion project Dances With Wolves. He said,
I had a chance to do The Hunt for Red October for more money than I’d ever seen. I felt like Gollum with the ring. I thought, Oh my God, I’m going to take that ring. But I made this promise that I would go do this movie. I had to watch my own movie.
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Both Dances with Wolves and The Hunt For Red October were highly loved by fans when released in 1990 and were big commercial hits. While the latter won only one Oscar for Best Sound Editing, Dances With Wolves won in 7 categories including Best Director for Costner, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Film Editing, Best Cinematography, Best Original Score, and Best Sound Mixing. Costner’s gamble and creative intuition paid off big time.
Kevin Costner Regretted The Fact That Wyatt Earp Came After Tombstone
Kevin Costner played the real-life American lawman Wyatt Earp in the film of the same name directed by Lawrence Kasdan. While the film featured the life story of the famed lawman leading up to the infamous O.K. Corral gunfight, the same story had been told six months prior in 1993’s Tombstone, which had Kurt Russell as Earp.
In an interview with GQ, Costner stated that while he loves Wyatt Earp, there were a lot of comparisons and a weird competition with Tombstone going on which he regretted. Thus, the film was not received well and became a flop. The Field of Dreams star said,
I love Wyatt, or I just love that movie. We got into a level of competition with Tombstone. A good friend said, ‘Look, we can postpone this movie. We don’t wanna compete’. And I said, ‘I’m sure this writer, director wants to make this movie, let them. And I always regretted that there was this kind of weird competition, and it was a fun movie, Tombstone, but it’s too bad it went the way it went.
Costner recently returned to the Western genre with his latest passion project Horizon: An American Saga Chapter 1. Unfortunately, the film failed to impress fans and became a box office flop. The planned release of the second chapter in August has now been canceled (via The Guardian). It remains to be seen what Costner decides to do with the future films in the series.