Paramount can’t say no to the man behind Yellowstone: $50,000 a week for his ranch, $25 per cow
Yellowstone creator Taylor Sheridan has built a network of lucrative commercial projects that feed off his hit TV shows.
No one on the set of Yellowstone could figure out why the show was paying a horse wrangler who was more than 2500km away.
It was May last year, and the Paramount Network blockbuster western was gearing up for a fifth season that was, by all accounts, expected to be another hit – both for its all-powerful creator, Taylor Sheridan, and Paramount Global, the media conglomerate bankrolling his operation.
Back in the show’s production offices in Stevensville, Montana confusing expenses were piling up, including a time card requesting more than $US3000 from a wrangler named Barbara Stuart.
“I was surprised to see a timecard for a TX (Texas) wrangler come through last week even though we are now shooting in Montana,” Mary Jasionowski, the show’s production controller, wrote to Stuart, who also was not known to the head of animal wrangling on set.
“I am Taylor Sheridan’s wrangler,” Stuart wrote back, saying she worked on one of his ranches and prepared his horses for use in filming the show. She was an employee of Sheridan, paid for by the Yellowstone budget, caring for horses he charges the production to use, located on a ranch where the production pays him to film: these are the hallmarks of the Sheridan business model.
In addition to getting paid to write, produce and sometimes direct his shows, Sheridan has built a network of lucrative commercial projects that feed off them, including actor-training “cowboy camps” at one of his ranches and renting herds of cattle at $US25 a head.
The model has cranked out huge hits for Paramount and almost single-handedly has driven the success of its nascent streaming service Paramount+ and cable channel Paramount Network. It also has pushed costs to among the highest in Hollywood. Privately, executives and crew involved in the shows question both the total amount of spending and where the money is going.
Sheridan’s explosive success has given him seemingly unlimited leverage over his production partners: 101 Studios, which makes his shows, and Paramount, which pays for them. The actor turned writer and ranch owner dictates where and how his shows are filmed with little pushback, according to executives and crew workers. Among his favourite locations are his own Texas ranches, where he can charge Paramount as much as $US50,000 ($73,800) a week.
It’s a level of power unusual in the industry, where even the most successful showrunners typically don’t have such control or personal ventures tied to their productions.
Paramount and 101 Studios executives acknowledge Sheridan’s shows can be costly – episodes of the Yellowstone prequel 1923 run to at least $US22m each – but say they are comfortable with their working relationship.
“Taylor’s shows are among our most successful and profitable,” a Paramount spokeswoman says.
Executives at 101 Studios say they work with Sheridan on finding a balance between saving money and maintaining the quality expected on his shows. They say the company is cost-conscious but argue Sheridan’s shows, particularly the Yellowstone franchise, are worth the cost as proven by their success.
Sheridan declined to be interviewed for this article. Speaking earlier this year at a convention for cattle owners, he said, “There’s nothing better than a movie company showing up and filming for about a month and paying you a bunch of money and leaving. It’s about the greatest deal going.”
Sheridan’s output has proved critical for Paramount’s streaming strategy. Its service Paramount+ added nearly 10 million subscribers in the fourth quarter of 2022 on the back of Sheridan’s Yellowstone prequels 1883 and 1923. Last week, the company said it added about 4.1 million subscribers in the first quarter, bringing total subscribers to more than 60 million.
Internal frustration over the spending on Sheridan’s shows comes as Paramount is facing scrutiny from investors following a first-quarter loss of $US1.1bn.
That included a $US511m loss in its streaming business, due partly to increased spending on streaming content. Shares dropped more than 28 per cent.
Also for Paramount, Sheridan created Tulsa King, starring Sylvester Stallone as a New York mobster who relocates to Oklahoma, and Mayor of Kingstown, starring Jeremy Renner as a prison power broker. He has at least five other shows in development under a contract that runs through 2028, including Lawmen: Bass Reeves, about the pioneering black US marshal, and Lioness, a CIA drama starring Nicole Kidman.
Sheridan has churned out one hit after another with Shakespearean tales of betrayal, intrigue and homespun heroism.
Beyond writing scripts, he has created a conglomerate of businesses to service the productions. By renting his ranches, horses and other holdings to the shows, Sheridan has collected at least hundreds of thousands of dollars on top of the millions he makes to write and produce, according to invoices and interviews with his associates.
Sheridan’s shows are described by executives and crew members as drenched in excess, from on-set catering bills double what would be expected to expensive shoots and overtime fees that take costs significantly over budget.
In total, Paramount spends more than $US500m a year on the production of Sheridan’s shows. That includes close to $US200m alone for the first season of 1923, starring Harrison Ford and Helen Mirren as Depression-era ranchers. For the eight-episode season, that comes out to roughly $US500,000 a minute.
Other shows with similar high-quality production values cost less. At HBO, The Last of Us cost $US16m to $US18m an episode, and House of the Dragon episodes typically run just under $US20m each, people close to both shows said.
Paramount+ still lags behind Netflix and Disney+, and Paramount is a small fish in a large pond ruled by tech giants and much-larger media rivals.
Last year, Paramount’s various streaming services lost $US1.8bn, and S&P Global forecasts Paramount’s streaming losses will hit $US2bn this year. Other streaming platforms, including Disney+, haven’t turned a profit and Paramount says Sheridan’s shows are not the problem.
“If we could do three more partnerships with people as successful, creative and prolific as Taylor, we’d do it in a heartbeat,” the Paramount spokeswoman says.
Privately, executives have raised concerns about spending on Sheridan’s productions. While gorgeous landscapes and period details are one reason for the shows’ success, some say the high quality could be sustained at a lower price.
Sheridan’s requirements go deep into details rarely controlled by a showrunner. Not only does he charge Paramount to rent his own horses, he insists on the animals being outfitted with horseshoes by his preferred farrier. In May last year, the Yellowstone production flew two of those farriers from Texas to sets in Montana and kept them there for four nights while they completed the job, flummoxing executives at 101 Studios, which manages the production of Sheridan’s shows and licenses them to Paramount – which pays the bills.
“Are you kidding me? We can’t find a local person?” asked David Glasser, the head of 101 Studios, in an email to several production staffers reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.
“Taylor only uses these people to do his horses,” responded Bobby Lovgren, the show’s head animal wrangler.
The Paramount spokeswoman says, “Like many of the best creators, when Taylor is working on a western, he has a team of experts with whom he likes to work, but we ensure there are parameters in place to make cost effective decisions.” Glasser also questioned the prop master for Yellowstone, who ordered 24 horse saddles in the style used by Royal Canadian Mounted Police, for $US23,519.19.
“We have had 5 seasons of a show. And we are just ordering saddles now?” Glasser asked in an email. In another email he wrote: Why was $US3130 worth of prop jewellery being made out of state when in-state vendors allowed the show to apply for tax breaks? “That is ridiculous. Seriously. How do we control this?” Glasser wrote.
After Stuart, the Texas horse wrangler, submitted time cards, Glasser called Sheridan to discuss the personal employees who were billing the productions, according to emails. “He is now completely aware of the problem and was pretty (receptive) in trying to fix it,” Glasser wrote to some production officers.
Stuart was approved to be paid out of the Yellowstone budget, but “I was clear others are going to be cut,” he wrote.
Glasser is in the awkward position of attending to Sheridan’s demands while also explaining the costs to Paramount.
A former protege of jailed producer Harvey Weinstein, he started working with Sheridan in the aftermath of Weinstein’s disgrace over accusations of sexual assault. Yellowstone was a long-shot bet when Paramount announced its first season in 2017. Today, much of 101 Studios’ business is dedicated to Sheridan’s productions.
The company is also co-owner with Sheridan in a $US340m ranch in Texas. Many in the industry, including executives at Paramount, say the shared ownership is an unusual arrangement for a show creator and his nominal production-company bosses because it could lead to a conflict of interest.
Sheridan was born Sheridan Taylor Gibler in 1970 in North Carolina, the son of a cardiologist. Soon after, his family moved to a ranch near Cranfills Gap, Texas (population: 277). As a kid, he wanted to be a sheriff. At Texas State University, he flunked out. A Hollywood scout liked his look and recruited him. He moved to Los Angeles, hoping to make it as an actor going by the name Taylor Sheridan.
Shortly before leaving Texas, something happened that Sheridan would cite in interviews as a formative moment. His family sold its ranch when his parents divorced. He didn’t know of the sale since he was away at college, and his mother has said he didn’t speak to her for a year on hearing the news.
In Hollywood, Sheridan found a specialty in western roles. After years toiling in relative anonymity in front of the camera, he found himself in high demand behind it following two movie scripts that were commercial and critical hits: Sicario, a 2015 movie about Mexican drug cartels on the border that starred Emily Blunt, and 2016’s contemporary western Hell or High Water.
Along with his directorial debut, 2017’s Wind River, which he also wrote, the trio of films established Sheridan as a writer of good-and-evil morality plays that hearkened to Hollywood’s John Wayne era.
Paramount agreed to air his first TV series, Yellowstone, on its Paramount Network cable channel. Starring Kevin Costner as rugged John Dutton, a Montana landowner trying to protect his property from developers and keep his family together, Yellowstone quickly built fans in what Hollywood insiders derisively refer to as “flyover country”.
After a few years, its audience grew beyond rural communities, and Yellowstone became a hit everywhere, typically averaging more than 10 million viewers per episode, making it one of the most popular shows on television.
The Wall Street Journal
Katherine Sayre contributed to this article.