Key Takeaways
- Writer Lauren J. Salkin sued Taylor Sheridan, 101 Studios, Paramount and Elevate Entertainment, alleging they used her rejected 2016 pitch for Sovereign Nation to develop Yellowstone.
- Salkin cites shared elements including a politically powerful tribal casino, trust-land and 99-year lease conflicts, territorial expansion imagery, and the casting of Danny Huston and Gil Birmingham.
- Paramount greenlit Yellowstone within months of rejecting Salkin’s pitch, while the defendants had not commented on the lawsuit.
Taylor Sheridan built a television empire by doing things his own way. Now, the Landman creator is facing a lawsuit alleging that the show that launched that empire—Yellowstone—was built using ideas from another writer’s rejected pitch.
According to Variety, writer Lauren J. Salkin filed a copyright infringement lawsuit on Friday, August 21, accusing Sheridan of taking elements from her proposed Western drama, Sovereign Nation, and using them to develop Yellowstone. 101 Studios, Paramount and Elevate Entertainment, Sheridan’s management company, are also named as defendants. Representatives for the defendants had not responded to the outlet's requests for comment.
Salkin claims she submitted Sovereign Nation to Elevate in 2016 and received a rejection that read, “Taylor thanks you very much for your interest. Unfortunately, he’s unavailable for TV projects.”
The lawsuit challenges that explanation directly.
“Sheridan, however, was not ‘unavailable for TV projects,’” the complaint states. “Instead, he and others used Salkin’s copyrighted works to develop Yellowstone.”
The suit notes that Paramount greenlit Yellowstone within months of Salkin’s rejection, with the series ultimately premiering in June 2018.
Salkin isn't merely alleging that both projects are contemporary Westerns. Her complaint identifies what it calls “specific expressive choices” shared by the projects, including a tribal casino positioned as a center of political power, conflicts involving development beyond reservation boundaries, trust land, 99-year leases and recurring imagery involving plans for territorial expansion.
The lawsuit also points to two actors. Salkin alleges that her Sovereign Nation pitch proposed Danny Huston and Gil Birmingham, both of whom later landed major roles on Yellowstone. Birmingham played tribal chairman Thomas Rainwater, while Huston portrayed developer Dan Jenkins.
“When the works are objectively compared, the same coordinated design repeatedly appears,” the lawsuit argues, claiming the similarities “are not merely convergences of a shared genre.”
The allegations arrive as Sheridan has become increasingly vocal about the Hollywood system he once struggled to break into. Billy Bob Thornton, who stars as Tommy Norris on Landman, recently told Town & Country that “Hollywood wasn’t nice to Taylor,” adding that Sheridan eventually found acceptance within Texas’ ranching community because “he’s not phoning it in.”
Sheridan himself has described an even rougher climb. Before Yellowstone, he spent years working as an actor and has said he was homeless twice, including a six-month stretch living in his car. After appearing on Sons of Anarchy, he shifted toward writing, eventually scoring acclaim with films including Sicario, Hell or High Water and Wind River.
Yellowstone changed the scale entirely. The Kevin Costner-led series spawned multiple offshoots and helped Sheridan establish a larger slate that now includes Landman, Tulsa King, Lioness, Mayor of Kingstown and The Madison.
Sheridan has also made no secret of his resistance to Hollywood oversight. “This is not a democracy. There’s no committee,” he said during a June appearance on The Bill Simmons Podcast, describing his approach to making television.
