EXCLUSIVE: At the end of the day, NBCUniversal’s poach of Yellowstone co-creator Taylor Sheridan came down to money. Sources said that the five-year deal that begins in 2029 (earlier for movies) is at the unprecedented $1 billion territory. That is how it will work out in creator/EP and writer fees and backend, if the prolific Sheridan follows through on his plans to create 20 shows for NBC and the NBCUniversal streamer Peacock. There are slot guarantees, the equivalent of put pictures all over the place.
But there were many steps in between, including another example where when Donna Langley wants something, she finds a way to get it.
While Sheridan felt the frost from Paramount’s TV leaders on the streaming side Cindy Holland, who runs Paramount+, and Dana Goldberg, who oversees the Paramount TV Studios where Sheridan is based, the courtship from others was vigorous. That include Warner Bros Discovery chief David Zaslav bringing as a gift to Sheridan cowboy boots that were once worn in a movie by James Dean. Sheridan is on great terms with Zaslav, an outgrowth of F.A.S.T., a feature drama that Sheridan scripted for Warner Bros and producer David Heyman, which Ben Richardson is directing that stars Jason Clarke, Sam Claflin, Sheridan’s 1923 discovery Brendan Sklenar and LaKeith Stanfield. Amazon MGM and Netflix were also in the mix.
While Zaslav has learned lessons from his casual dismissal over NBA rights that led the league to move its hoops deal, that wasn’t the case at David Ellison’s Paramount Skydance, where things changed for Sheridan in ways he was not accustomed to. Ellison has been all over the NFL to lock down a new deal even though the current one doesn’t expire within this decade. Sheridan’s ends late 2028, and the courtship toward a deal that would have let Sheridan end his run where it began just lacked that kind of urgency being shown football or even the South Park guys.
As was proved out in his long-running disagreement with Yellowstone star Kevin Costner that culminated in John Dutton being summarily killed and written out of the final-season arc, Sheridan is best left alone to do what he wants. He is collaborative enough, but he’s going to do what he wants. His attitude is, he is 12 for 12 in terms of creating shows that have become hits and established the Paramount Network and Paramount+ streamer as hitmaking enterprises. That includes Yellowstone, the prequel series and sequel series, Landman, Lioness and the rest. Since he quit acting after being made to feel a perishable commodity by a business affairs exec who wouldn’t give him a proper raise on Sons of Anarchy, Sheridan has found gold in his typewriter from the time he began writing films like Sicario and Hell or High Water, and he’s attracted the biggest talent through those scripts.
He circled the wagons when Paramount Global’s former CEO Bob Bakish and former co-CEO Chris McCarthy needed him. They launched the streaming service under the power of the Yellowstone prequel series 1883, an epic that was done at high cost and at blinding speed by Sheridan. It delivered on every promise made by Sheridan.
Cut to the things that left him feeling less than appreciated under the new regime brought in by David Ellison and Skydance since they took over the game. When Sheridan submitted an early favorite feature script of his, Capture the Flag, he was not happy to have it sent back with extensive notes from Skydance’s Goldberg, now co-chair of Paramount Pictures.
Nor was he happy upon learning that not only was his hit series Lioness in danger of being summarily canceled over budget, Paramount+ made a different series deal with Kidman and never told Sheridan it happened. That was the big blow, but there were others.
Another Sheridan series creation, The Correspondent, was removed from next year’s slate. The drama was about a war correspondent on the front lines of Afghanistan.
While Sheridan is a my-way-or-the-highway guy in a cowboy hat, he enjoyed an interactive relationship with the former regime that brought the kind of consistent success not seen since Kevin Feige hired Robert Downey Jr to play Iron Man and built the Marvel Cinematic Universe at Disney.
Whether this was former Netflix honcho Holland and Goldberg wanting to pave a new road for Paramount+, Sheridan felt dismissed and that opened the door wide for others.
Then it became a question of where Sheridan would land, and the easy answer became NBCUniversal. Langley, the chair of NBCUniversal Entertainment, made it her mission to find commonality with Sheridan. She visited him numerous times at his ranches for long talks about what a future with her would look like. And so, 10 days ago, after Paramount sent a dozen people to a final meeting with Sheridan, Langley had already made her impression. Sheridan told Ellison he would finish out his Paramount series commitments, and then hang his cowboy hat elsewhere. Also moving with him is the David Glasser-run 101 Studios, which gets a first-look deal and an early start on Sheridan’s feature work for NBCUniversal, along with producing a slew of shows that should eventually transform Peacock into much more than a repository for Saturday Night Live reruns and other NBCUni films and series. And the reruns of Yellowstone that Paramount sold for a song back in the day, before the series became the biggest thing on basic cable.
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