Yellowstone fans get a jumbo-size season 5, a new prequel and Sylvester Stallone as ‘Tulsa King’

Creator of the popular Western drama announces plans for a huge new season, a new Dutton family story and other series starring Sylvester Stallone, 75, as a Tulsa mobster.

Kevin Costner stars in the TV series Yellowstone. Picture: Stan.

“Yellowstone” territory is expanding, and fast. ViacomCBS is extending the next season of cable TV’s most popular series, adding four episodes more than previous seasons. The show’s fifth season will be split into two instalments of seven episodes each, and used to launch several new streaming shows from co-creator Taylor Sheridan.

“Yellowstone,” a dynasty tale heavy on action, melodrama and horses, finished its fourth season in January with an average 10.4 million viewers on the Paramount Network. Coming series include a second Dutton family prequel, “1932,” which follows the family at the centre of the “Yellowstone” saga into the Depression era.

Based on the recent success of a first streaming prequel, frontier drama “1883,” ViacomCBS is accelerating everything related to “Yellowstone.” ViacomCBS said Tuesday it is renaming itself Paramount Global, and will refer to itself as Paramount. The media company hopes to leverage the massive “Yellowstone” audience while the show remains hot, and to use it for herding viewers to even more of writer-producer Mr. Sheridan’s shows on its streaming service, Paramount+.

“We want to double down on that momentum and not waste it,” says Chris McCarthy, chief executive of ViacomCBS Media Networks and MTV Entertainment studios, which co-produces Mr. Sheridan’s shows with 101 Studios. He announced this Sheridan-verse expansion plan — details of which are still being hammered out — Tuesday during a presentation for ViacomCBS investors.

Taylor Sheridan, left, and Kevin Costner from the Paramount Network series Yellowstone. Picture: AP

The company signed Mr. Sheridan to a $200 million production deal in early 2021. Around the same time it unveiled Paramount+, which the company has been rushing to stock with fresh series and movies in a quest to compete with established streamers.

These new shows are being developed at full gallop by the standards of big-budget television. Mr. Sheridan is only in the outline phase for the script of “1932,” but like “1883,” the period drama would have to be prepped, shot and ready for premiere in roughly 10 months.

Mr. McCarthy says the “1883” experience assured him that producers can stay on pace and maintain high standards. “We don’t want to damage the franchise,” he says. The executive notes that Mr. Sheridan has pulled back from his duties as a showrunner and director to focus on writing. Some “Yellowstone” fans complained that the show’s plot idled in its most recent outing. Mr. McCarthy says split opinions are expected for a fourth-season show with a passionate fan base.

ViacomCBS is betting on a tandem strategy between the old-fashioned world of linear television and the newer ecosystem of on-demand streaming. Last December, fans got to sample “1883” for two weeks on cable following episodes of “Yellowstone.” They had to subscribe to Paramount+ to watch the rest of the prequel series.

A Sylvester Stallone drama is next in line for this hybrid debut. He plays an East Coast mobster who relocates after a prison stint in “Tulsa King.” Originally titled “Kansas City,” the Paramount+ series will premiere this summer during the planned first part of “Yellowstone” season 5.

Mr. Stallone bonded with Mr. Sheridan over horses. They met at an equestrian centre in Burbank, Calif., where Mr. Stallone’s daughters trained in the same Western riding style as Mr. Sheridan.

Sylvester Stallone will star as a Tulsa mobster.

The “Rocky” creator says he relates to Mr. Sheridan as a fellow writer drawn to similar character types. “He’s bringing back a kind of rugged individualism that has been sorely lacking,” Mr. Stallone says. “Tulsa King” gives the 75-year-old actor a crack at the Mafia genre. “Every time I see a gangster-type film, I think, ‘I can do that.’ ” One goal of the streaming push is to make up for the fact that “Yellowstone” isn’t available on Paramount+. Before the platform launched, the burgeoning hit was licensed to a rival streamer, NBCUniversal’s Peacock. ViacomCBS says it generated $100 million from digital downloads of “Yellowstone” in 2021, up from $60 million the year before.

ViacomCBS, which doesn’t share specific streaming statistics, says “1883” is the No. 1 title on Paramount+ to date. The size of the show’s streaming audience doubled during its run, according to Tanya Giles, ViacomCBS’s chief programming officer for streaming.

To use “Yellowstone” as a cable launch pad for more streaming series, executives needed more of the flagship show, which spanned 10 episodes in recent seasons.

Billy Bob Thornton.

More “1883” is expected to appear on Paramount+ in the fall, followed by the planned second instalment of “Yellowstone” season 5. That would be the vehicle for introducing “1932,” which follows a son of characters played in “1883” by Faith Hill and Tim McGraw.

Billy Bob Thornton has been cast in “Land Man,” a streaming series expected to draft off “Yellowstone” next winter. Like “Tulsa King” and another Paramount+ hit by Mr. Sheridan, “Mayor of Kingstown,” it doesn’t take place in the “Yellowstone” universe. But it mines similar heartland themes. Mr. Thornton plays a crisis manager for an oil company in the drama set in the 1980s in Beaumont, Texas, a backdrop for the state’s petro boom and bust.

Mr. Sheridan said in a statement that he and his studio partners are building stories around “the forgotten chapters of the American experience.” The launch sequence for yet the third “Yellowstone” spin-off is still being worked out, Mr. McCarthy says. Named after the Four Sixes ranch in Texas that is a growing part of the plot of “Yellowstone,” “6666” is expected to premiere as a stand-alone series on Paramount Network later this year or next.

— The Wall Street Journal