Taylor Sheridan Made Yellowstone Into TV's Hottest Franchise

As television audience viewing patterns have been upended during the past few years, Hollywood has adapted some new conventional wisdom when it comes to the state of TV: Linear hits don’t exist anymore, especially on basic cable. Series don’t grow their audiences several seasons in. It’s no longer possible to make shows that appeal to both the heartland and the coasts. And nothing beats the NFL in the ratings. Then again, as Taylor Sheridan noted to Adweek earlier this year, “That’s why I’m not in Hollywood!” His outsider status (he’s lived in Texas for the past decade) emboldened Sheridan, Adweek’s TV Creator of the Year, to co-create Yellowstone—the Paramount Network drama that stars Kevin Costner as John Dutton, the patriarch of a family that controls the country’s largest contiguous ranch—and turn it into TV's biggest hit, and hottest franchise, of the past year. Last November, the show’s Season 4 premiere stunned the industry by debuting to 14.7 million viewers across its Paramount Network, CMT, Pop and TV Land simulcast. That was a 58% increase over the Season 3 premiere, and it outrated everything else in primetime that week, including NBC’s Sunday Night Football. And that was just the start. Season 4 also launched the first two series Sheridan created as part of the extended Yellowstone universe he is building out with Chris McCarthy, president and CEO of Paramount Media Networks and MTV Entertainment Studios (which co-produces Sheridan’s shows alongside 101 Studios). Late last year, prison industry drama Mayor of Kingstown (starring Jeremy Renner) and Yellowstone prequel 1883 broke records on both linear and streaming platforms. The two shows had the biggest cable linear debuts in three and six years, respectively, and 1883 was Paramount+’s most-watched original title ever. Now, Sheridan has six new series on the way over the next year. “Luck is preparation meeting opportunity,” said Sheridan, who used 2020’s Covid-19 production shutdown to write pilots to all the shows he had ideas for, and then sent them to all the actors he’s wanted to work with, like Sylvester Stallone and Zoe Saldaña. “Before you know it, we had another four series.” Sheridan spent 15 years acting in shows like Sons of Anarchy and Veronica Mars, before reinventing himself as a screenwriter of films like Sicario and Hell or High Water (which received an Oscar nomination for original screenplay). Then-producers John and Art Linson suggested he create a TV show about a ranch. “I’m from a ranching community, and I have a lot of friends who are cowboys and ranchers,” Sheridan told Adweek. “That way of life was really struggling, and TV gives you an opportunity to look very deeply at something.” His next drama, Tulsa King—with Stallone as a mafia capo released from prison after 25 years who is exiled by his boss to Oklahoma—debuts Nov. 13 on Paramount+. (Its first two episodes will air Nov. 20 on Paramount Network following an episode of Yellowstone.) In December, he’ll roll out the next Yellowstone prequel, 1923, starring Harrison Ford and Helen Mirren, which will follow the Dutton family during Prohibition. Four more series are in the works for 2023: 1883: The Bass Reeves Story, Lioness, Land Man and another Yellowstone spinoff, 6666 (set on the Texas ranch featured in the show's fourth season). As more projects pile on his plate, Sheridan has largely abdicated directing duties to others on his crew, saying, "We’ve groomed from within people that have the tonal sensibility like me, that understand the way that I like to storytell with a camera.” But he still writes all of the Yellowstone-related scripts himself, he said, “because I’ve never found any other writers that grew up on ranches.” To adhere to his production mantra—“No surprises”—Sheridan stays on schedule, making sure he has scripts written early enough to keep production running smoothly and on time. Despite the nine scripted shows (and counting) he now oversees, “we haven’t hit the point to where the wheels are coming off yet,” Sheridan said, adding that if that does happen, “we’ll slow down” in the output of new shows and premiere dates to “make sure that we never have a drop-off in quality.” And even as he builds out TV’s hottest franchise, Sheridan is making sure not to lose focus on the hit series that started it all. While he did agree to expand Yellowstone’s upcoming fifth season—debuting Nov. 13—from 10 to 16 episodes at McCarthy’s request (the season will be split in half, with the second part slated to air next spring), he otherwise has not altered his approach to the hit show following last season’s breakout success. “I don’t change a thing,” said Sheridan. As is the case with all his films and series, “I make it the way I want to make it.” Check out the rest of the 2022 Hot List here.

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How Taylor Sheridan Turned Yellowstone Into Television's Hottest Franchise

Adweek's TV Creator of the Year's shows—9 and counting!—are dominating linear and streaming

Jason Lynch

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Jason Lynch