Kevin Costner’s Epic Western Series Rides Onto a New Streaming Platform in January

Kevin Costner has spent much of his career redefining what the Western looks like on screen, and now one of his most personal projects is getting a second life on streaming. Kevin Costner’s The West, the eight-part documentary series fronted and executive produced by the Oscar winner, is heading to Kanopy this January — giving viewers a chance to revisit (or discover) his most clear-eyed examination of the American frontier yet.

Costner’s association with the genre has only deepened in recent years. After decades of Western classics like Dances With Wolves and Open Range, his role as John Dutton on Yellowstone turned him into a television icon for a new generation. That chapter ended abruptly when Costner departed the Paramount+ series to focus on his ambitious Horizonfilm saga, with John Dutton written off. Since then, Yellowstone has wrapped its original run, even as multiple spin-offs continue to expand the franchise.

But The West represents something different — less mythmaking, more excavation. Executive produced alongside renowned historian Doris Kearns Goodwin, the series promises “a fresh look at the epic history of the American West,” focusing on the brutal struggle over land and power, and how those conflicts continue to shape America today.

Why Did Kevin Costner Make ‘The West’?

As Costner explained in recent comments, this stage of his career is about honesty — both personal and creative.

“I’m willing to do anything where I feel like what I’m doing is for myself. It doesn’t have to be a Western, it could be something else. But when something is no longer interesting to me, or there’s some other reason that I need to move on, I’m willing to do that.”

That philosophy runs directly through The West. Rather than leaning into the familiar romantic imagery of cowboys silhouetted against endless horizons, Costner is interested in what those images often left out.

“When we first started making Westerns, people fell in love with the imagery. They couldn’t believe how big the country was and how beautiful it was… But you didn’t really understand how the town came to be. You didn’t think about any of the hardships.”

According to Costner, that selective memory shaped decades of Western storytelling.

“We didn’t see the exploration and the confrontation, which was inch-by-inch and usually ended in blood. People didn’t really want to see that — the slaughter, fear and cultures clashing. The romantic idea is one of heroism, which is a little more acceptable. Everything that happened in Dances With Wolves or Open Range or Horizon actually happened out there. Those interactions happened a million times… In some way, this documentary backs it all up. There were slaves and there were captives in the West. We did mislead Native Americans for our own good — and we kept doing it, from one shore to the other shore.”

Kevin Costner’s The West will arrive on Kanopy in January.