32 Years Later, Kevin Costner's Tombstone Replacement Western Is Streaming For Free

Published Sep 7, 2026, 8:00 AM EDT Simon Gallagher has worked in movie and TV journalism for more than 17 years. He has written more than 6000 articles and reviews, and edited thousands more. He is an expert in the entertainment industry, particularly in the golden age of screen superheroes. Simon is also a Rotten Tomatoes approved critic. At this point, it’s almost a cliché to proclaim Tombstone the pinnacle of the 1990s Western renaissance. So ubiquitous is Kurt Russell’s popcorn Western ensemble that people often overlook the other excellent ‘90s Westerns like The Quick & The Dead, Ravenous, and Unforgiven. Even Young Guns 2 and Mel Gibson’s Maverick should be remembered with more reverence, but Tombstone is basically a cultural lightning rod, and rightly so. The 1993 classic’s enduring popularity lives on the back of eminently quotable dialog, a commitment to fast-paced entertainment, and colossal performances by Russell and Val Kilmer in particular as the magnetic, doomed Doc Holliday. More than three decades after its release, the endlessly rewatchable Tombstone continues to hold audiences in the palm of its hand. And yet, history could have turned out very differently. As happens surprisingly often, Tombstone was one of a pair of movies about Wyatt Earp and the gunfight at the O.K. Corral that rewrote the American Wild West. On the other side of the battlelines sat Lawrence Kasdan’s competing vision, Wyatt Earp, starring Kevin Costner, then still fresh off his Oscar win for Dances with Wolves. Impressively for Tombstone, what should have been a heavyweight battle was fairly one-sided, with Wyatt Earp crashing at the box office and turning critics off almost entirely. You could be forgiven for dismissing Wyatt Earp entirely based on that outcome, but to do so would be to undervalue what is a great Western by any other standard. Costner’s three-hour epic may have been a victim of context and competition, but it deserves higher acclaim than it was given at the time, and it has aged very well. And crucially, with Wyatt Earp now available to stream for free on Tubi, it’s never been easier to realize that it’s actually possible to enjoy both movies. Why Kevin Costner Made Wyatt Earp Instead Of Tombstone There’s a universe out there somewhere where Kevin Costner actually starred in Tombstone. He was in talks to star as the infamous lawman - it’s often overstated that he was actually cast - but backed off over disagreements with scriptwriter (and original director) Kevin Jarre on how much focus should be given to Earp alone. Tombstone, ultimately, was too much of an ensemble for Costner, who wanted to explore the psychological roots of the legendary figure. Ironically, given the criticism over Wyatt Earp’s eventual runtime, Costner and Lawrence Kasdan - his collaborator on Silverado - almost made it a 6-hour miniseries, but concluded that a feature was the right way to tell the story. That vision would have looked deeper into Earp’s past and how it shaped him before he ever came to Arizona, in rather stark contrast to the ready-made myth Kurt Russell played him as. Costner’s Tombstone exit then ignited a now-legendary rivalry, though Russell told Henry Cabot Beck, that Costner “gave the movie to Kevin with his best wishes.” Somewhere along the line, that turned into a more aggressive stance, as it was believed Hollywood had no appetite for two movies on the same subject. Legend now has it that Costner attempted to sabotage Tombstone’s release, contacting distributors to turn them off it. As Russell recalled: "He was powerful enough at the time, which I always respected. I thought it was good hardball.” But Tombstone managed to secure private backing, got to theaters six months earlier, and won the box office battle. How Wyatt Earp Compares To Tombstone Image via MovieStillsDB Where Tombstone plays like a ripping, action-heavy thrill-ride, Wyatt Earp is far more considered, which can - and was - misread as being ponderous. Costner’s rival Western is more of a biopic, exploring the makeup of his character and everything that led up to the gunfight at the O.K. Corral, rather than showing the flashpoint as the whole story, as Tombstone chose to. Wyatt Earp actually gets under the skin of the legendary lawman far better than Tombstone, by design, covering his early life in Illinois, the tragedy of losing his first wife, and the time he spent as a horse thief. Long before he gets to the O.K. Corral, he’s a well-trodden character we’ve spent a significant amount of time with, and the scale of the movie is just as grand as the script. It remains a stunning portrait of frontier life. Unfair dismissals of Wyatt Earp tend to call it more boring than Tombstone, but it’s just a completely different animal. Costner’s Earp isn’t the heroic retired gunfighter with a glint in his eye that Russell’s was; he’s colder, sterner, and emotionally distant, but we don’t arrive at that point by accident, and he’s absolutely a product of what happens to him. And Costner couldn’t rely on a scene-stealing show by Val Kilmer to liven things up: his Doc Holliday (an underrated Dennis Quaid) is darker and more uncomfortable to watch. All-in-all, Wyatt Earp is a misunderstood, massively underrated movie that requires more patience as a character study, and which deserves to sit alongside Tombstone as a completely different, but no less relevant companion piece. So watch it on Tubi and give it its due. Wyatt Earp Release Date June 24, 1994 Director Lawrence Kasdan