Sheridan’s decision to leave looks pretty simple in that light; one side offered a deal worth a whopping $1 billion, while the other didn’t offer anything. Of course, Paramount did partner with Sheridan on a sprawling Texas studio, and new CEO David Ellison praised the creator publicly in the press. But Sheridan was reportedly already having problems with his home base studio before the Skydance merger brought Ellison’s regime in. Paramount’s film division had rejected his script Capture The Flag and meddled with his deal to make the movie F.A.S.T. at Warner Bros. (WB Discovery CEO David Zaslav reportedly also tried to woo Sheridan away from Paramount by visiting him in Texas and gifting him a pair of cowboy boots worn by James Dean, a hilarious detail in light of the fact that Sheridan went with NBCU instead. But Sheridan probably wouldn’t want to hitch his wagon to a studio likely to be gobbled up by somebody else, especially by the very studio he’s trying to leave.)
After the merger, Paramount got rid of most of Sheridan’s closest contacts, including former president and CEO for Showtime/MTV Entertainment Studios and Paramount Media Networks Chris McCarthy. While Ellison and a number of other execs did meet with Sheridan after the merger, it sounds like the Yellowstone mastermind requires a more personal touch. That’s where NBCU’s Donna Langley came in. She personally spent the summer coaxing Sheridan into a film deal by championing the studio’s relationship with auteurs like Christopher Nolan, Jordan Peele, Chris Meledandri. Then Paramount rejected Sheridan’s new series The Correspondent (about a war correspondent on the front lines of Afghanistan), and making television somewhere else started to look pretty attractive, too.
This all culminates in a major loss for Paramount, as Taylor Sheridan’s empire seemed to be singlehandedly keeping Paramount+ afloat. But the new regime is being pretty ruthless about cutting costs, and Sheridan’s productions are notoriously expensive. It’s said he doesn’t like to have his budgets questioned, nor to get any notes back on his scripts, and the new overlords were doing both. And as is probably the case with most Hollywood standoffs, ego is also a factor. Sheridan was offended by the rejections from Paramount and by the fact that no one informed him Nicole Kidman had a new show at the network that would interfere with Lioness scheduling. On the other side, David Ellison has been working to launch a new era at the studio with big, buzzy talent deals, and didn’t want to give Sheridan carte blanche for his. As one source put it to THR, “Ellison wants to run the show and he can’t with Sheridan there.”
