Taylor Sheridan’s NBCUniversal Megadeal Worth $1 Billion! [Updated]

UPDATE: Wait, am I reading this write? That eight-year TV and movie deal Taylor Sheridan just signed with Universal was worth $1 billion? That’s what The Wrap is reporting. Investing this much into one man is quite the risk.

EARLIER: Here’s a bombshell. Taylor Sheridan — the cowboy-poet turned television emperor — is leaving Skydance-owned Paramount. He’s decided to exit and sign a new deal at NBCUniversal. You can’t really blame him.

According to Puck’s Matt Belloni, Sheridan, who built the house of “Yellowstone”; and then some, is not happy with Paramount’s new brass, led by Cindy Holland. They started nitpicking his budgets — which can hit $20M an episode — and even tried to interfere with an unrelated film deal Sheridan had already made at Warner Bros.

Sheridan’s bolting for NBCUniversal in a deal so large it borders on the ridiculous — a five-year, nine-figure TV pact beginning in 2028, paired with an eight-year film arrangement that kicks off in March. Universal has now nabbed the most successful television auteur of the past decade, plus his whole empire, including 101 Studios.

Universal has been positioning itself as a filmmaker’s studio — home to Nolan, Peele, and Spielberg — and Sheridan clearly saw himself in that company.

Ellison, for his part, is a major loser here. Maybe history will view this as a colossal error on his part — the moment Paramount let the man who redefined populist TV walk away without any effort.

Sheridan, writer-turned-director-turned-showrunner, is responsible for the mega-hit “Yellowstone” and its two prequel shows, “1883” and “1923.” Not to mention ultra-popular Paramount+ content such as “Tulsa King” and “Landman.” There is major demand for whatever he does.

I’m mixed when it comes to his film scripts. Sometimes they work — “Sicario” was mostly driven by Denis Villeneuve’s pulse-pounding direction, but its sequel “Day of the Soldado” was a total mess. Sheridan’s “Hell or High Water” screenplay resulted in a fairly gripping neo-western.

He’s directed three films: the 2011 horror film “Vile,” 2017’s “Wind River,” and 2021’s Angelina Jolie–starring “Those Who Wish Me Dead.” The strongest of the bunch is, by far, “Wind River,” which plays like a snowy neo-western.

There’s been some major critical resentment towards Sheridan’s TV work. Critics haven’t been kind, as backlash has developed over “Yellowstone” — in fact, of the many anti-“Yellowstone” think pieces that have popped up in recent years, a New York Times article criticizing the show as “conservative” and “populist” was quite absurd. And I’m not even a fan of the show.

On an episode of Joe Rogan’s podcast, Sheridan didn’t mince words on his opinion of critics: “There’s a lot of defiance in the way that I do it. It’s not surprising that critics hate [‘Yellowstone’] … They’re confounded by its success. They can’t get their minds around why it’s a success.”