No one who had met Sheridan Taylor Gibler Jr. in his early youth, when he made his living mowing lawns and painting houses in Austin, the capital of Texas, where he had come to study at the local university, would have imagined that this boy he was going to become the new king of American television one day. It is that who in the last year has produced and written five series, including the very popular Yellowstone, began his path in show business in the simplest way, when a talent scout found him asking for a job in a shopping center of that size. city, and proposed that he travel to Chicago to try his luck as an actor.
She began with small roles in film and television using the pseudonym Taylor Sheridan when she was 23 years old, and at 25 she landed her first series regular role on Veronica Mars. He was 26 when he was cast as David Hale in Sons of Anarchy, and while his good looks and a fair amount of talent helped him stand out in the role, had he followed that path he doubtfully would have gotten this far. Everything changed 12 years ago when the son of a cardiologist from Fort Worth, Texas decided to write a script at a time when he only had $800 left in his bank account. Mayor of Kingstown was hugely successful. Numerous studios and agencies made financial proposals to give it to more experienced writers and producers to bring it to the screen.
However, Sheridan refused and preferred to keep it in a drawer. Instead, he did accept that Denis Villaneuve direct his next script, Sicario, which starring Benicio del Toro, Emily Blunt and Josh Brolin put him on the map thanks to box office success accompanied by the respect of critics and three Oscar nominations. David Mackenzie directed his next project, Comanchería, with Jeff Bridges and Chris Pine, for which he received his only Academy Award nomination for Best Screenplay.
Sheridan completed his film trilogy with Wind River, with which he debuted as a director, with which he toured Sundance and Cannes accompanied by Jeremy Renner and Elizabeth Olsen and in which he ventured for the first time into a subject that obsesses him, indigenous reservations. . And while he was already a respected filmmaker by now, the best was yet to come.
Yellowstone, the series with which he immersed himself in country life, drawing inspiration from his visits to his grandparents' ranch in Texas and his own experience as an owner, was initially acquired by HBO, which turned down Costner as the lead and asked for in his place Robert Redford, something that Sheridan got, although the studio later clarified that they did not want the octogenarian actor but someone who looked like him when he was younger. The negotiation ended badly, and although usually the studios keep the scripts they don't want to film so that the competition doesn't do them, in this case a senior executive who was about to leave returned the rights, which allowed Paramount to later convert it. in one of the biggest television hits of this decade.
His transformation into king of the middle, however, had a purely real estate reason. When the owner of the gigantic ranch 6666 in West Texas left in her will that he would be the first to have the opportunity to purchase the site, similar in size to the one owned by John Dutton in Montana, Sheridan was not intimidated when They told him that the price was 320 million euros, even though he only had 18 to invest. Paramount's interest in expanding the Yellowstone universe and harnessing the screenwriter's amazing talents on other projects led to a deal for 183 million European currency for him to sit down to work on. Taylor Sheridan bought the 250,000-acre ranch with the help of some investors, and moved there with his wife and his son.
Famous for not letting others call the shots, though he initially hired respected showrunners to take over the other projects, the 53-year-old was responsible for two Yellowstone prequels, 1883 and 1923, with Harrison Ford and Helen Mirren, Mayor of Kingston, which he ultimately did on his own terms and Tulsa King with Sylvester Stallone. In addition, he directed his second feature film, Those Who Desire My Death, with Angelina Jolie, his first dismal flop.
Accustomed to writing episodes without help in a few days, Taylor has already finished filming Special Ops: Lioness with Zoe Saldaña and Nicole Kidman and is preparing three other series, Land Man with Billy Bob Thornton, and two stories from the world of Yellowstone, a spin -off, which he will film on his own ranch, and a sequel, which could star Matthew McCounaghey.
