“Taylor Sheridan is getting ready to hang up his spurs at Paramount, The Hollywood Reporter has confirmed. The prolific Yellowstone and Tulsa King writer and director is expected to jump to NBCUniversal, starting with a film deal that will go into effect next year. Sheridan’s TV deal with Paramount is not up until the end”, — write: www.hollywoodreporter.com
The prolific Yellowstone and Tulsa King writer and director is expected to jump to NBCUniversal, starting with a film deal that will go into effect next year. Sheridan’s TV deal with Paramount is not up until the end of 2028, but he is expected to bring that over to NBCUniversal when it ends.
Puck first reported Sheridan’s move. A spokesperson for NBCU declined to comment.
Sheridan is one of the industry’s biggest talents, creating the Yellowstone franchise (along with its multitude of spinoffs like 1923 and 1883), the Sylvester Stallone-led franchise Tulsa King and other programming for Paramount, like Special Ops: Lioness and Mayor of Kingstown. And his work has proven appealing to A-listers, with Kevin Costner, the original star of Yellowstone (a falling-out over the last season perhaps putting a damper on that show), and Harrison Ford, Helen Mirren, Sam Elliott and Jeremy Renner among the stars to sign on for some of his other shows.
Sheridan’s next film, however, an action-thriller called FASTis set up at Warner Bros.
His NBCUniversal deal is expected to be a rich one (no surprise there), although he will have to create a wholly new IP when he does make that jump in a few years’ time. As is typical in these deals, Paramount owns Yellowstone and the other franchises he has created for that company. Still, his programming has become a dramatic backbone of the Paramount+ streaming platform, and will likely continue to be for years to come given how many active projects he has, and the long timeframe before he joins NBCU for TV projects.
“I spent the first 37 years of my life compromising,” Sheridan told The Hollywood Reporter in a 2023 profile. “When I quit acting, I decided that I am going to tell my stories my way, period. If you don’t want me to tell them, fine. Give them back and I’ll find someone who does — or I won’t, and then I’ll read them in some freaking dinner theater. But I won’t compromise. There is no compromising.”
Paramount, now under CEO David Ellison, has made appealing to top talent a priority, inking a long-term deal with South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone, inking a new film and TV deal with the Duffer brothers and locking in other key talent and IP. Daily Show host Jon Stewart said Sunday that he is talking to Paramount about extending his time in the host chair for the Comedy Central late night show.
But NBCU, whose entertainment efforts are led by Donna Langley, has also forged a reputation as being talent-friendly, poaching talent like Christopher Nolan and Seth Rogen, and inking deals with multihyphenates like Snoop Dogg.
Sheridan and his 101 Studios famously shoots in Texas and Montana, and and his company in fact partnered with Paramount to expand their footprint in Texas earlier this year in a bid to boost production in the state,