Kevin Costner's New Prime Video Western Series Is A Spiritual Prequel To Clint Eastwood's Iconic 50-Year-Old War Movie

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Kevin Costner's Devil Anse smoking a pipe in Hatfields & McCoys

Published Feb 16, 2026, 3:02 PM EST

Kevin Costner is not giving up Westerns just yet and is returning in Prime Video's new Western series titled The Gray House, which is "spiritually" a prequel to an iconic Clint Eastwood movie released 50 years ago.

The Gray House is a historical miniseries produced by Morgan Freeman and Costner and is set on the Underground Railroad during the U.S. Civil War, as four women help turn the tide of war in favor of the Union by changing from railroad operatives into spies. The series' cast includes Daisy Head, Paul Anderson, Amethyst Davis, Ian Duff, Hannah James, Robert Knepper, and Christopher McDonald.

In an interview with ScreenRant's Liam Crowley for The Gray House, executive producer Lori McCreary and writer Leslie Greif spoke about The Gray House ahead of its February 26 release date, as well as the undeniable connection to Eastwood's iconic Western war film, The Outlaw Josey Wales, released in 1976 and Costner's miniseries is kind of a prequel to what Eastwood's film ended up becoming:

Liam Crowley: The Gray House technically exists in the same world as 1917 and Oppenheimer. With that in mind, are there any pieces of film or television that are set around the Civil War era that you think are a nice little gateway to watching either before or after The Gray House?

Leslie Greif: From a Western point of view, you got the Outlaw Josey Wales with Clint Eastwood, which was post-war, after it happened. You had the earlier things like The Blue and the Gray. You were able to tell North and South. Those are two out of that '70s era that we wanted to be able to spin out.

The Outlaw Josey Wales stars Eastwood as a Missouri farmer who joins a Confederate guerrilla unit after Union "Red Legs" murder his family. He refuses to surrender as the Civil War ends and is hunted down as an outlaw, creating a new and unconventional family while seeking revenge. The Gray House is set when the Civil War begins, and they are, of course, in favor of the Union, so seeing both sides of the coin is fascinating for lovers of history and action.

Lori McCreary: I think that if you want to see the moral cost of war, maybe Glory, just because I'm connected with Morgan. It's one of those films that so many people come up to Morgan and say, "I did not know we were there. I did not know this story." And so I'm hoping that women come out of The Gray House and say, "Wow, look what we did. This is kind of great."

Leslie Greif: John Frankenheimer's Andersonville is another great piece of filmmaking if you like that stuff.

Lori McCreary: Lincoln as well. I mean, that was fairly recent.

Glory was released in 1989 and starred Freeman as Sgt. Maj. John Rawlins during the American Civil War and highlights the Union Army's first all-black regiments, showing prejudice on both sides of the war. Seeing an underrepresented minority during the Civil War is a helpful insight for those trying to look back through history and see things through an entirely different lens.

Frankenheimer's 1996 film titled Andersonville showed hunger, exposure, and disease attacking Union soldiers at an overcrowded Confederate prison camp in 1864 Georgia, and the iconic 2012 film starring Daniel Day-Lewis titled Lincoln showed an entirely different perspective of political leaders tackling the Civil War and President Abraham Lincoln trying to unite his country and abolish slavery.

The Gray House will be available to stream on Prime Video on February 26.