Updated

Updated · Fox News · Aug 20

Taylor Sheridan Signed Paramount Exclusive Deal After $330 Million Four Sixes Ranch Purchase

Updated

Updated · Fox News · Aug 20

Taylor Sheridan Signed Paramount Exclusive Deal After $330 Million Four Sixes Ranch Purchase

Q: Why did a $330 million ranch purchase force Taylor Sheridan to quietly kill one of his most anticipated television spinoffs?

The $330 million Four Sixes purchase killed the planned **“6666” spinoff because once Taylor Sheridan became a steward of the real ranch, he said he could no longer treat it as a fictional TV setting.** Sheridan has explained that buying the ranch changed his relationship to it. What had been a dramatic backdrop in “Yellowstone” became a living institution he felt responsible for protecting, especially after Anne Marion’s wish that the property be preserved rather than broken up. As owner with an investor group, he said he would not “fictionalize” the Four Sixes or invent soap-opera conflicts around a place where real people work and raise families. That is why the ranch deal mattered so much. It did not just give him a filming location; it gave him a duty to preserve the ranch’s legacy, brand and workforce. Sheridan said making an ongoing series there would require “making up lives” and “inventing drama,” which he viewed as trivializing the real cowboys and employees tied to the property. The irony is that the same purchase pushed him to sign his exclusive Paramount deal and expand his TV empire, but it also shut the door on one of the most anticipated “Yellowstone” offshoots. Although Paramount had previously announced “6666” in development, Sheridan has since made clear: “There’s never going to be one.” In short, the ranch purchase did not bankrupt the spinoff; it made Sheridan too protective of the real Four Sixes to turn it into serialized fiction.

2 articles · Updated · Fox News · Aug 20

$330 million for Texas' Four Sixes Ranch upended Taylor Sheridan's plan to retire after “Yellowstone,” pushing him into an exclusive overall deal with Paramount.
Sheridan said he had already bought a Weatherford ranch outright and was ready to stop working, but the larger purchase meant he needed long-term financing and a reason to keep creating.
Paramount had spent years trying to lock him into exclusivity, he said, fearing he could take his projects elsewhere; once the ranch came up, he called with a price in mind.
The investor-led purchase closed on Jan. 21, 2022, after Sheridan said the ranch's late owner wanted its vision preserved rather than the property being broken up and sold.
Since that deal, Sheridan has expanded Paramount's lineup with “Mayor of Kingstown,” “1883,” “1923,” “Lioness,” “Landman,” “Tulsa King” and “The Madison.”