Yahoo News HBO Told Taylor Sheridan His Original ‘Yellowstone’ Pitch Was ‘So Middle America’ and ‘a Step Backward’
Taylor Sheridan is calling out HBO for underestimating the appeal of the neo-Western genre.
The “Yellowstone” creator shared in a wide-ranging The Hollywood Reporter cover story that HBO bungled the initial deal for the mega-hit series before it landed at Paramount Network. Sheridan pitched “Yellowstone” as “‘The Godfather’ in Montana,” and the script, despite originally being written as a film, was in series development at HBO under then-programming president Michael Lombardo.
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Despite Sheridan pitching the idea of Kevin Costner playing patriarch John Dutton, the network “didn’t see it” and wanted Robert Redford.
“They said, ‘If you can get us Robert Redford, we’ll greenlight the pilot,'” Sheridan recalled. “I drive to Sundance and spend the day with [Redford] and he agrees to play John Dutton. I call the senior vice president in charge of production and say, ‘I got him!’ ‘You got who?’ ‘Robert Redford.’ ‘What?!‘ ‘You said if I got Robert Redford, you’d greenlight the show.’ And he says — and you can’t make this shit up — ‘We meant a Robert Redford type.'”
Soon thereafter, an HBO network vice president, “whose name I remember, but I’m just not saying it,” added Sheridan, invited Sheridan and “Yellowstone” co-creator John Linson to a meeting to discuss next steps.
“We go to lunch in some snazzy place in West L.A.,” Sheridan said. “And John Linson finally asks, ‘Why don’t you want to make it?’ And the VP goes, ‘Look, it just feels so Middle America. We’re HBO, we’re avant-garde, we’re trendsetters. This feels like a step backward. And frankly, I’ve got to be honest, I don’t think anyone should be living out there [in rural Montana]. It should be a park or something.'”
The HBO executive also allegedly took issue with the character Beth Dutton, now played by fan favorite Kelly Reilly.
“‘We think she’s too abrasive. We want to tone her down. Women won’t like her,'” Sheridan remembered the VP saying. “They were wrong, because Beth says the quiet part out loud every time. When someone’s rude to you in a restaurant, or cuts you off in the parking lot, Beth says the thing you wish you’d said.”
He added, “So I said to them, ‘OK, everybody done? Who on this call is responsible for a scripted show that you guys have on the air? Oh, you’re not? Thanks.’ And I hung up. They never called back.”
It wasn’t until Lombardo’s exit in 2016 that Sheridan was able to pitch “Yellowstone” elsewhere.
“When the regime changed, Lombardo called me. To his credit, he said, ‘I always believed in the show, but I could not get any support,'” Sheridan said. “His last act before they fired him was to give me the script back. I took it to TNT, I took it to TBS!”
“Yellowstone” eventually ended up at Paramount, with the big-budget first season premiering in 2018. Per an Atlantic report in 2022, Sheridan told Viacom executives that the series was going to cost approximately $100 million and that he would retain total creative control.
The first season of “Yellowstone” was expected to cost $7 million per episode but by the end of production, it was more than $20 million over budget due to script and production delays. However, Paramount’s bet on Sheridan paid off: “Yellowstone” has spurred multiple spinoffs, and Sheridan is also behind fellow Paramount-backed hit series “Tulsa King,” “Mayor of Kingstown,” and the upcoming “Special Ops: Lioness.” Original series “Yellowstone” will conclude later this year after five seasons amid lead star Costner’s exit.
And former HBO executive Lombardo knew Sheridan would be a hit from the start.
“I thought Taylor was the real deal,” Lombardo told THR. “In a world of people who pose, he was writing what he knew, and he cared desperately about the show. The idea of doing a modern-classic Western was a great idea — we were always doing urban shows, and this felt fresh.”
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