In The Highwaymen, directed by John Lee Hancock, Costner plays former Texas Ranger Frank Hamer, one of a posse of officers who shot the pair dead in a dawn ambush in Louisiana in 1934. Harrelson plays his partner Maney Gault.

"We've chosen this one story about Bonnie and Clyde, and rather than tell their story, we've told the story of the men who hunted them down and risked their lives to bring a murder spree in America to an end," Costner told Reuters.

The 1967 move Bonnie & Clyde starred Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway as the gangster pair believed to have murdered 13 people, robbed banks, and staged kidnaps and car thefts.

But the new flick takes a very different path, Costner said in Madrid during a promotional tour.

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"They were made heroic in the 1967 movie and that's too bad. But that's how it was made. The men that chased (them) were just average men doing their job," the veteran US actor said.

The Highwaymen will premiere on streaming service Netflix on March 29.

Asked whether movies that go straight to streaming services have the same cache as those released in cinemas, Costner noted that film and television producers were increasingly experimenting with releasing their work online.

With their high-quality long-form programs, Netflix and others are raising the bar for traditional TV production, he said. "Television didn't (have) a very big hold over me until you started having extended stories," he added.

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