Taylor Sheridan’s writing on Yellowstone and its spin-offs has always been scrutinized and examined most acutely. However, a positive aspect of this aspect of fan behavior is only an indication of their unhindered obsession with his work. Oscar-nominated for his second feature film’s screenplay, Sheridan charted a path only upward from there, armed with his ruthless ambitions.
With Yellowstone defining an era of television like none other, the audiences are right to feel protective of the series that has defied old tropes to bring something new to the entertainment industry. But one untimely misstep on Sheridan’s part concerning the multiple Yellowstone spin-offs and other unrelated series threatens to topple his empire at Paramount any moment now.
Yellowstone Finds Its Inspiration in the Legendary Four Sixes
As a teenager, Taylor Sheridan dreamed of becoming a lawman out of Bosque County, like most of his ancestors. But unlike his predecessors, Sheridan’s ambitions shattered prematurely when his parents split up and sold the ranch where he grew up.
Despite being the purveyor of bad memories, his childhood was preoccupied with the wild expanse of his family’s ranch in North Texas, the birthplace of the legendary Four Sixes ranch. It was here that the future mogul of Western television would go on to find the inspiration for his neo-Western original series.
The Four Sixes (or 6666) ranch immediately symbolizes much of what the audience sees in Sheridan’s fictional world of Yellowstone. A 150-year-old ranch owned by a single dynastic family whose horse-and-cattle operation was becoming an increasingly unsustainable lifestyle compared to the fast-paced, urbane, capitalist, and technologically evolving world outside. In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Sheridan claimed:
I grew up in the shadow of the Four Sixes. To just get one of their horses was a status symbol, because they’re so well trained. This was the ranch I based [Yellowstone’s] scope and operation on, because it didn’t exist in Montana. Most ranches there had already been carved up. They’d already lost it.
His view was the same while writing the radically original and shockingly relevant screenplay of Hell or High Water, the film for which Sheridan would go on to win his career’s first Academy Award nomination.
Speaking of the modern-day American frontier and its evolution in the past 100 years, he revealed that films like Sicario and Hell or High Water examine “how much has changed in 100 years, and how much things haven’t.”
What are the consequences of decisions and actions that are a century old and today? I was exploring the death of a way of life.
This death is uniquely displayed in bold in his Paramount flagship series, Yellowstone. For Taylor Sheridan, the story is not merely a fictional one but a largely relevant piece of work signifying the death of an entire subculture in the American Midwest.
Taylor Sheridan Leaves Behind a Strong Legacy
The history behind the making of Yellowstone is shocking and long-winded. After decades of toiling away in front of the director’s lens, Taylor Sheridan finally caught a break when a friend approached him to write a screenplay. Despite having no experience in that arena whatsoever, Sheridan whipped out a story within 12 hours and there was no looking back ever since.
The Texan actor-turned-filmmaker followed a singular motto when starting the second act of his career — Sheridan may have never been a scriptwriter before but he had 20 years’ worth of experience reading bad scripts to know what to avoid. And this philosophy worked out quite well for the Yellowstone creator.
On the other hand, his one-man show made some writers’ room antsy, since their primary fight involved fair opportunity, just pay, and the refusal to let AI and corporate machinery overtake their jobs. Considering the unfaltering pace at which Sheridan whips out original stories and new episodes every 24 hours, the writers’ rooms might be justified in being threatened by his existence.
Currently, Taylor Sheridan has 3 projects associated with Yellowstone at work: the fifth season of the flagship series itself, the second season of its prequel series 1883, and a new spin-off show set in the world of the Duttons titled Madison starring Michelle Pfeiffer.