Taylor Sheridan defects from Paramount, relinquishing control of Yellowstone universe once deal expires

New Paramount boss David Ellison probably regrets the words he used only two months ago to describe his bond with TV impresario Taylor Sheridan.

“I have a really good relationship with Taylor, and I think he is a singular genius and content creator,” Ellison told MSNBC.

“My goal is to have Taylor call Paramount his home for as long as he wants to be telling stories.”

Sheridan is the man who created Yellowstone and its spin-offs, as well as popular shows Mayor of Kingstown, Tulsa King, Lioness, Landman and Lawmen: Bass Reeves.

He is a hitmaker with an iron-fist control over a TV empire and someone every studio boss wants in their stable. Sheridan’s shows attracts millions of viewers, even on linear TV, at a time of fractured viewing.

He was also one of Paramount’s most valuable assets when Ellison’s company, Skydance, took over the storied Hollywood studio in a $US8 billion takeover.

Now, Sheridan is headed for the door, having defected to rival NBCUniversal in a mega-deal that has all of Hollywood abuzz.

It’s a massive coup for Universal and its chair of entertainment, Donna Langley, who orchestrated the poaching of Sheridan. The news was first reported by Puck, who wrote that Sheridan signed an eight-year film contract and a five-year TV deal with a “major pay increase”.

Deadline reported, citing anonymous sources, that the TV deal could be worth around $US1 billion including upfront and backend fees. Universal’s streaming platform in the US is Peacock, whose titles are currently distributed in Australia mostly through Binge and Foxtel.

Yellowstone fans don’t have to despair just yet because Sheridan’s Universal deal doesn’t kick in until his current contract with Paramount expires at the end of 2028, which means the writer will still be committed to his existing TV universe for a further three years.

While the original Yellowstone series wrapped earlier this year, there are several spin-offs in the works including two shows which follow the surviving Dutton kids - Dutton Ranch, centred on Beth (Kelly Reilly) and Wheeler (Cole Hauser) and has signed up luminaries Annette Bening and Ed Harris, and Y: Marshals, which will see Kayce (Luke Grimes) join the US Marshals.

Also set within the Yellowstone universe are The Madison with Michelle Pfeiffer, Matthew Fox and Patrick J. Adams, and another historical saga, 1944, which follows in the template of 1923 and 1883.

Sheridan will be working on all those Yellowstone shows, but if they outlast his tenure at Paramount, they will continue without him.

Everything Sheridan has created for Paramount will stay there, and the studio owns the rights to that intellectual property, giving them the ability to extend them, spin them off, create new shows based on existing and different characters.

If that eventuates, it will definitely be interesting to see how it would work and who would take over the creative reins.

Sheridan is notorious for his singular control over his work. He is one of the very few creators and showrunners in Hollywood who does not work with a writers room (The White Lotus’s Mike White is another).

Sheridan’s influence is so vast that when he and Kevin Costner came to public blows over scheduling and availability over the fifth season of Yellowstone, it was Costner who was written out.

The network imposed a writing team on Sheridan for the second season of Yellowstone, and it was not a successful collaboration, lasting only that year. Which means there aren’t natural successors who have been groomed to succeed him.

He has, however, worked with different writers on some of his non-Yellowstone shows including Landman and Mayor of Kingstown, while Tulsa King and Lawman: Bass Reeves are overseen by other producers and writers.

The production company that houses all of Sheridan’s shows, 101 Studios, will also move to Universal when the deal kicks off in 2029.

In addition to Universal, Sheridan also fielded overtures from Warner Bros, Netflix, Amazon and Apple. Deadline reported that Warner Bros boss David Zaslav gifted Sheridan a pair of cowboy boys James Dean once wore in a movie.

It’s a setback for Paramount and its new leadership team, which also includes recently appointed streaming boss Cindy Holland, who was responsible for Netflix’s acclaimed early slate of originals before she was fired in 2020.

Puck reported that among the reasons Sheridan chose to defect was Holland’s questions and concerns over the budgets of his shows, which veer towards expensive given the production values, expensive talent such as Sylvester Stallone and they’re mostly filmed on location (many of them on Sheridan’s own Texas ranch, which he hires back to the studio).

The other factors included the exit of Chris McCarthy, a Paramount executive Sheridan was close to who left after the merger closed. Paramount will sack a further 2000 American staffers this week as part of the restructure.

Since the Skydance and Paramount deal closed, Ellison has been spending big including $US7.7 billion to lock up the rights to UFC and $US1.5 billion on South Park’s Trey Parker and Matt Stone.

He also wooed Stranger Things creators the Duffer brothers away from Netflix with the promise of cinema releases for their film projects, signed Will Smith to a multi-picture deal, as well as filmmaker James Mangold, which included his upcoming reunion with Timothee Chalamet in a movie about a motocross heist.

Ellison, whose father is Oracle founder, multibillionaire and Donald Trump ally Larry Ellison, has also made three rejected bids for Warner Bros Discovery, which officially put up a for sale sign this month.