A rejection letter stating he "was not available for TV projects at this time" has become the most damning piece of evidence in this lawsuit. The plaintiff's side is citing this exact line, questioning why Taylor Sheridan got Paramount to greenlight "Yellowstone" just months later.
"Yellowstone," which aired from 2018 to 2024, tells the story of the Dutton family and their battle over ranch land in Montana, created by Sheridan alongside John Linson. According to Variety, screenwriter Lauren J. Salkin is now suing not just Sheridan himself, but also Paramount, 101 Studios, and Elevate Entertainment.
Salkin says she pitched her script "Sovereign Nation" to Sheridan's company Elevate back in 2016, and received a response stating "Taylor appreciates your interest, but he is not available for TV projects at this time." The complaint alleges that Paramount then greenlit the development of "Yellowstone" "within months," and directly states that "Sheridan was not, in fact, 'unavailable for television projects' — rather, he was using Salkin's copyrighted work, together with others, to develop 'Yellowstone.'"
The overlaps listed in the complaint are quite specific: "a tribal casino serving as the central institution of political and development power," "a pivotal confrontation scene in the tribal chairman's casino office over an expansion plan beyond reservation boundaries," and "trust land, lack of zoning restrictions, and 99-year lease structures as the concrete mechanism for expansion." The complaint also points to "recurring master-plan imagery used to represent the struggle for territorial control."
An even more specific allegation involves casting. Salkin claims she had originally wanted Danny Huston and Gil Birmingham for "Sovereign Nation," and both actors went on to play "structurally near-identical characters" in "Yellowstone."
The complaint states: "When the two works are objectively compared, the same coordinated design appears again and again: political power organized around a casino as its center; the same unusual land-development mechanism driving conflict; parallel scenes serving identical dramatic functions; the same actors appearing in structurally analogous roles. These are not mere genre coincidences. Combined with access and timing, they support a strong inference of copying."
Since "Yellowstone" wrapped, it has spawned multiple spinoffs including "1883," "1923," "Marshals," and "Dutton Ranch." NME has reached out to representatives for Paramount and Sheridan for comment, and had not received a response at the time of publication.
