Seven years ago, Taylor Sheridan was 41, and living as a struggling actor in a grimy Hollywood apartment with his wife, Nicole, and their son, Gus. But now, not only is he a writer-director, but he is acclaimed as his generation’s best Western storyteller. He is the creative force behind Sicario, Hell or High Water, and Wind River, a thematic trilogy exploring the new American West, writes Esquire. Two new films of his will be released this summer: Sicario: Day of the Soldado (June 29) and the premiere of Yellowstone (June 20), a ten-hour drama made for the Paramount Network. Sheridan is hoping Yellowstone will deliver the “John Ford experience to television, now that even my cousin who works two jobs has a giant flat-screen,” he said, according to Esquire.
In order to make this series, Paramount gave complete creative freedom and a $90 million budget to a guy who had no previous experience developing and running a TV show. Sheridan wrote and directed every episode, and for him, the stakes could not be higher. But those around him aren’t nervous, though.
“The people that Taylor admires from a film standpoint,” Kevin Costner, who stars in Yellowstone, told Esquire, “he has a real chance to be better than all of them.”
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