Yellowstone‘s Taylor Sheridan options the rights to story of a famed Comanche leader

One-man “entire TV Westerns industry” Taylor Sheridan has lined up his next project, Deadline reports, with the Yellowstone creator/writer/director/landlord having picked up the rights to Pulitzer Prize nominee Empire Of The Summer Moon. Written by S.C. Gwynne, the book tells the story of the Comanche leader Quanah Parker, who led the Nation in battle against the U.S. Army during the Red River War, before ultimately overseeing their resettlement in Oklahoma in the 1870s, eventually serving as sheriff of Lawton, Oklahoma in 1902.

Parker’s life, in other words, touches on about a billion different elements that appear throughout Sheridan’s work—tough men of destiny, Native American history, the ways the American legal system distorts and tears at the borders of liminal spaces, etc.—and so it’s not surprising that the Comanche leader’s story has been a passion project of Sheridan’s for some time. He apparently has just emerged from a “competitive” bidding process with the rights to the book, with the assumption that he’ll be turning it into the next facet of his massive TV empire—which we’re just going to go ahead and assume he’ll be writing singlehandedly, since that is how the Taylor Sheridan TV machine works.

Now, the optic issues of a white man taking it upon himself to tell Parker’s story are obvious—but also familiar to Sheridan, who helped cement his transition from “10th billed guy on Sons Of Anarchy” to “King Of The Hollywood Outsiders” with 2017's Wind River, set on the titular reservation in Wyoming. Sheridan has spent large chunks of the last several years with both a professional and personal focus on Indigenous stories and issues, working regularly with Indigenous actors like Gil Birmingham and Graham Greene. None of which changes the basic facts—white guy buys Indigenous story, turns it into TV show—but does at least suggest he’ll be treating the material with as much respect as he can muster.

Sheridan is currently working to finish up the back half of the final, Kevin Costner-afflicted season of Yellowstone; counting that one, he’s served as executive producer on fully seven TV shows that have aired new episodes in the last two years.