Kevin Costner in Yellowstone
Kevin Costner is not known for his modesty. When he left neo-Western TV drama Yellowstone in 2023 due to creative issues and “difficult” salary negotiations to focus on his own two-part cowboy film Horizon: An American Saga, Park said he entered into an unusual clause in his contract, which prohibits producers from killing him off in a way that would “cause shame or embarrassment to the character.”
Showing neither shame nor embarrassment, Costner appears to have changed his tune and is reportedly lobbying to appear in the final fifth season. The second part of season five will begin filming this spring, and his character John Dutton is not currently in the scripts. You might think that this is not difficult. Costner is a big-name star, Yellowstone runs on the small American cable station Paramount and its tiny streaming service Paramount.
But Yellowstone is no ordinary show. In the era of multi-segmented streaming, it's a monumental hit, becoming the most-watched TV show in America since its launch in 2018. The fourth season attracted more than 12 million viewers, and the fifth season premiered 16 million. Amazon and Netflix have already ordered copycat neo-Westerns, and studio bosses are so keen on continuing the saga with or without Costner that his British co-star Kelly Reilly is about to sign a new deal for the upcoming $1.20 spin-off. millions per episode, making her one of the highest paid actresses in the United States.
All this has led to Yellowstone creator Taylor Sheridan becoming one of the most influential showrunners in Hollywood. The bad news for Costner is that he hasn't decided if he wants Kevin back.
This is an impressive change in status. Twelve years ago, Costner was filming Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit at Pinewood Studios while Sheridan, 54, was an actor struggling to make his last $800 after leaving the crime drama Sons of Anarchy. Realizing that he would never become a star, he began to look closely at his first script.
“I was a fair actor, but that's all I ever intended to be,” Sheridan told the Hollywood Reporter last year. “Hollywood will tell you what you should do if you listen. If you spend 20 years banging your head against the wall trying to become an actor, maybe you shouldn't be an actor. But the first thing I ever wrote, the Mayor of Kingstown pilot in 2011, got me into every major network, every agency. Several people tried to buy it.”
Kelly Reilly in Yellowstone
He's written films – Sicario in 2015, Hell or High Water in 2016 and Wind River in 2017 – but since 2013 he's been working on Yellowstone, which has been called “The Godfather of the Biggest Ranch in Montana” ” The series follows rough-hewn sixth-generation Costner rancher John. Dutton, owner of the Yellowstone Dutton Ranch. He is regularly besieged by forces threatening to destroy his ranch—from neighboring Native Americans to resort developers Market Equities to animal rights activists—and he regularly resorts to murder to preserve his land.
Sheridan submitted the script to film and television studios without much interest. Westerns were not made. Yellowstone was turned down by HBO, which leaned toward Succession instead. In the end, it was picked up by Paramount – at that time it was only a cable channel, and a poorly performing one at that. For critics and Hollywood, the resulting success came as a shock.
“The HBO show gets all the press, but not as much of an audience,” says Alan Wolk, co-founder of New York-based media analysis firm TVREV. “Yellowstone just didn't get any critical attention when it launched, and then they looked up and thought, 'Damn it!' This is a very popular hit. The New York Times published an article calling the show a “red state,” which prompted pushback. Trying to ascribe conservative values when the good guy mostly wins and family is important doesn't work. It's not Trumpian, it's just what people like.”
Harrison Ford and Helen Mirren in the prequel to Yellowstone, 1923 . : James Minchin III/Paramount+
Indeed, Sheridan's apparent advocacy for the environment, his sympathy for animal rights characters and criticism of the treatment of Native Americans have already sparked a backlash from the right, who have declared his show “too woke.” The only thing he is not is an anti-capitalist.
“Paramount dedicated the majority of its scripted content budget to Taylor Sheridan after signing him to a multi-year deal in 2021, and the results have been amazing,” says Tom Harrington, an analyst at Enders Analysis. “His phenomenal speed of nine shows in three years is on another level when it comes to creating franchises. There are others that have similar control over the outcome of individual networks, such as Law & Dick Wolf from Order on NBC, but it took him years to expand his universe. It seems that the Sheridanverse materialized in a matter of months.”
Paramount went all in with Sheridan, who churned out prequel after interconnected prequel, including “1883,” set in the old West, and “1923,” starring Harrison Ford and Helen Mirren. Depression-era ranchers, Lowman: Bass Reeves starring David Oyelowo as the real-life first black Deputy U.S. Marshall, and the upcoming 1944 show, a 2024 sequel to Yellowstone expected to star Matthew McConaughey, and “6666,” which takes place at the Four Sixes Ranch in Texas.
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Sheridan also wrote the scripts for the unrelated dramas “The Mayor of Kingstown,” “SWAT: Lioness” starring Nicole Kidman, the Sylvester Stallone mob drama “Tulsa King” and the upcoming film “Landman” starring Billy Bob Thornton, Demi Moore and Jon Hamm, all for Paramount.
This in itself is already a business. One estimate is that Paramount spends $500 million a year producing Sheridan shows, which typically cost between $10 million and $15 million per episode. Overall, 1923 cost about $200 million, and Costner's salary dispute stemmed from his $1.3 million per episode fee. Paramount+ believes these shows attract large numbers of subscribers: the company has 67.5 million subscribers worldwide, well below Netflix's 260 million but well ahead of Apple's 25 million. Paramount Global President and CEO Bob Bakish credits Sheridan with playing a critical role in that growth.
“Sheridan's performance record may be the best in Hollywood right now,” says industry insider blogger Entertainment Strategy Guy. “Showrunners are divided into two groups – average and elite. 90 percent are average. They get one try out of ten, and two other performances are good. Shonda Rhimes is above this, although not as strong as people think. Yellowstone and Sheridan's spin-offs 1899 and 1923 were clearly hits. None of his shows failed. Yes, Paramount+ relies on those shows, and that helps, but when they come to linear TV in the US, they do well too. He is the elite.”
On the back of this success, Sheridan, who likes to wear a white cowboy hat and distressed blue jeans for photo shoots and on the red carpet, has built a network of commercial projects. These include cowboy actor training camps at one of his ranches, as well as renting out his ranch, horses, cattle and other properties for shows he films.
A Wall Street Journal investigation found that Sheridan's favorite spots include his own ranches in Texas, which he rents to Paramount for $50,000 a week, charging the company $214,000 for his cowboy camps. And at the center of this empire is the Four Sixes Ranch in Texas, a sprawling 225-square-mile operation that houses some 4,000 cows, 200 bulls and 1,000 horses. Sheridan convinced his production company 101 Studios and New York private equity firm Yucaipa Companies to make a joint acquisition with him for $341 million in 2021.
He's already launched a Four Sixes-branded clothing line and a pickup truck, as well as Four Sixes beer and home-delivered beef, both of which figure prominently in Yellowstone season five—Dutton's daughter Beth is stunned to discover that Four Sixes beef is “sold out?” !” in the season finale. But he's not selfish about product placement. Coors is the show's official beer partner, Lucky Brand has a denim finish, and Yellowstone's product placement database lists 376 individual paid placements, ranging from an Apple MacBook Pro to a Bentley Continental GT to Carhartt jeans.
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In November 2022, Yellowstone's production company 101 Studios launched ShopTheScene, which allows viewers to scan a QR code displayed on the screen to purchase items. featured in the show. The premiere of the first part of the fifth season allowed viewers to buy everything from cowboy hats ($20) to Dutton's office chair ($3,200). At times, the site received more than 10,000 visitors per minute, with fans spending more than six minutes on the site.
Although product placement is a production company's business, Paramount does well with a line of branded products, offering Yellowstone-branded apparel, jewelry, cologne, furniture, food and beverage products in nearly 2,500 stores, as well as a wine brand and the 1883 Club.< /p>
This has not gone unnoticed in Hollywood, where the search for the magic money tree continues in grim financial times. Netflix is preparing to move away from old-school Western dramas American Primal and Abandoned, which are set in the 1800s. “Primeval” is an ultra-violent train drama that stars Taylor Kitsch as a gun-toting settler battling Indian warriors, while “The Leftovers” stars Gillian Anderson and Lena Headey as Oregon matriarchs battling corrupt wealthy interests trying to take over the land. their families. Meanwhile, Amazon has quickly tracked down an as-yet-untitled Western from True Detective creator Nic Pizzolatto. In other words, we live in Taylor's world, and Kevin Costner will have to learn to live in it too.
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