‘Everything seemed to go right’: Kurt Russell might ‘never make his peace’ with Tombstone — but The Madison on Paramount+ is his Western redemption

You can't help but make the comparison

14 Mar 2026, 12:00 · TechRadar

Features By Jasmine Valentine published 14 March 2026

This time, Kurt Russell plays Preston. (Image credit: Paramount)

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If you've got Google alerts on for Kurt Russell or Western movies, you've possibly seen the actor's unexpected comments about his 1993 hit Tombstone.

Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter, Russell (who played retired lawman Wyatt Earp in the film) explained: "The movie is not as good as the screenplay….I’ll never make peace with that. It could have been way better. It’s considered one of the great Westerns, right? It could have been considered one of the great movies. It had a great cast, but it had fabulous writing.

"And for a lot of different reasons, the money got burned through, and the director thing didn’t work out. So we had to go about it differently, and we got what we made. The impact of Tombstone is very strong, and that’s nice. That’s great. But could it have been a lot better? Yes."

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As luck would have it, another Western project is just around the corner. While the star is already in Monarch: Legacy of Monsters season 2 over on Apple TV, Russell is returning to his cowboy roots as Preston Clyburn in the new Taylor Sheridan show The Madison on Paramount+.

Frankly, the timing of the comments feels like serendipity, with the latter set in the heart of Montana, where Preston's ranch was built with his own two hands. But could Taylor Sheridan be responsible for Russell's genre redemption?

‘Sometimes things are smooth sailing, sometimes they’re not’

"That's a good question. It's hard because I can't make the comparison," Russell tells me. "Sometimes things are smooth sailing, and sometimes they're not. The Madison was smooth sailing. This was like one of those trips where everything seemed to go right. It was just really fun and with no problems.

"Tombstone was difficult, the editing process of it, where things were added. I'm just saying that it was a great script, and changes had to be made because of the situation that existed on that film all those years ago. But the impact of Tombstone remains.

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