Taylor Sheridan Is Leaving Paramount. What’s Next? Plus, ‘Nobody Wants This’ Season 2 and ‘The Chair Company’ Episode 3.

0:00I need supports to have to clear the room. Stand up and walk now Hello and welcome to The Watch My name is Chris Ryan I am an editor at TheRinger.com And joining me on the other line There's a new mayor in Kingstown It's Andy Greenwald You're so excited Hold on, let me get another sip of my restorative broth I know Andy, it's great to see you, man Just drinking soup on the pod This is the closest I've ever been Last night was the closest I've ever been to demanding an emergency podcast. And then I remembered that you were asleep because you're in England. It's great to see you today on the Watch Podcast.

0:42Two big pieces of news. Taylor Sheridan is leaving Paramount and going to Universal. And we're also going to talk a little bit about Paramount's efforts to buy Warner Brothers Discovery. And how these two stories, how they come together. How they meet in the middle. We're also going to take a spin through a couple of comedies. that are on TV right now, especially Nobody Wants This Season 2 on Netflix and The Chair Company, which aired its third episode on HBO Max and HBO on Sunday. Andy, great sweater. How you doing? Oh, thanks. You know, Bright Red here is the Labor Party. So it's actually like a red wave.

1:21Yeah. Just politically, in case you thought I was wavering or just hedging my bets to make sure I can get through customs when I finally come home. Make America greenwalled again? Sure. I mean, eventually it has to happen, right? It's hard to imagine, but it will. It's interesting being in cryo sleep when you are awake and then vice versa. Because when I woke up and I checked the trades, as I do, because man of the people, man of the industry, I saw the Taylor Sheridan news. And I actually foolishly thought, I can't believe this happened while Chris was asleep. and then I opened my email and there was a document on Google from you that was like podcast run of show and it was basically like this like a like a Martin Luther manifesto it had the strongest authorial voice of any notes doc I've ever seen you are so excited I'm glad that you respect my workout my workout thick you know I mean very few things get me fire it up like this.

2:19There's the trading of an all NBA player. Uh, there is the firing of a Louisiana state coach, you know, kind of, I like coaching carousels. I like transactional news. I don't know why I prefer stability in my personal life, but I love watching the chaos of things happen. And, uh, last night I was just hanging out while I think I was watching chair company and Matt Bellany's newsletter, what I'm hearing just popped up in my email. And I was like, let me see what old Matt has cooking on a Sunday night, that devilish grin of his. And what do you know? He broke a huge story. Taylor Sheridan is going to be leaving Paramount, according to Matt Bellany, in his newsletter.

3:01And I'm sure he and Lucas will be talking about this on The Town. So I highly recommend people go listen to that for actual reporting and inside industry analysis. But Sheridan, after a long relationship with Paramount, where it saw him become one of the most prolific and successful modern television creators and showrunners. Yeah. When his deal is up in 2028, he is going to be joining NBC Universal Comcast. He was basically wooed by Donna Langley. I can go through a couple of the sort of major narrative headline points of Matt's reporting, but this is a really, really big deal. It's a big deal because I think that if you had been reading a lot about David Ellison's acquisition of Paramount.

3:45David Ellison, obviously, from Skydance, and he recently purchased Paramount, and that deal went through. He has talked ad nauseum about Taylor Sheridan. He has mentioned multiple times their close relationship, that he is a creator unlike any other, that he will do, he's going to move heaven and earth to make sure that Taylor Sheridan is making TV at Paramount for as long as he can. And now he's not. before David Ellison really has time to measure for drapes in offices at Paramount, Taylor Sheridan, like basically the crown jewel of the television side of Paramount, is going over to Universal.

4:23Before I get into details, any initial reactions to this? Well, I think it is important, and you did say this, the timing of this is not as dramatic as the headlines might lead you to believe. As you said, he is going to move his television business, his new television business over in essentially two years. That's quite a long time. It also means that all of his existing shows, and you can recite them better than I can, but Mayor, do it. Taylor's current shows include Mayor of Kingstown, season four is airing currently. Tulsa Kings, which is in its third season. and then coming soon there's Dutton Ranch I'm getting through it okay okay yeah coming soon we've got Dutton Ranch which is the Annette Bening and Ed Harris show with Cole Hauser and Kelly Riley that's the uh that's the Yellowstone spinoff there's why colon marshals which is Luke Grimes from Yellowstone spinoff wait is it is it is it a question no it's like why I think it's supposed to be like yellowstone colon it was like why marshals and then timothy olfan shows up and it's just like because i have a beach house that's why marshals jesus lioness season three was just renewed uh after closing the nicole kidman deal nola king is an upcoming show with sam jackson and the madisons with michelle pfeiffer kurt russell patrick j adams which is also a Yellowstone show, I believe.

5:56And of course, Landman season two coming in November. So all of those remain, uh, both for the upcoming seasons and any potential future seasons, those are locked in to, uh, to Paramount. Um, it's about new business. And we saw something similar happen when Ryan Murphy left FX for an enormous blockbuster deal that was kind of an industry rattling move that suggests that showed that Netflix was changing its business paradigm and was going to put out these mega deals for showrunners and auteurs. Um, and, but at the same time, American horror story, uh, American crime story, all of these longer running, uh, Ryan Murphy anthology series remain on FX and continue to be on FX.

6:41So it, the, the, the The earthquake of this is more industry-facing at the moment than I think it is audience-facing, but it is very notable. So before we get into the paramount of it, I think I could speak to the universal of it, which is less reported because of all of the tumult at literally every other studio in town. Donna Langley, who is very widely respected as the film boss at Universal, her consolidation of power at Universal, taking over the TV side as well, has been relatively underreported and unremarked upon. Anytime anyone can be associated with the term consolidates power, there are going to be some major moves.

7:27And what is interesting about this is that it is a, at the very worst, it is a floor setter or floor resetter for Universal's streaming strategy. And in a way, it kind of echoes, I think, what NBC has become, which is basically the Dick Wolf Network. When you get in business with Taylor Sheridan, you are in business with a lot of things, including branded steakhouses. But you are also in business with one of, if not the most prolific creators who can generate an enormous quantity of TV at a relatively consistent quality. and can attract stars. I can't believe you were able to get through that last part.

8:08I was just staring into your eye. I miss you. Taylor Sheridan in the room with you right now. I guess I just miss America. I don't know. There aren't very many landmen here. That's why I got the red sweat on. But I guess so. And it, you know, it, it solves a lot of problems for you. If you are trying to both program at volume to expand your business. And there was a lot of reporting this week about just how much, how much NBC, Comcast, Universal is betting on the NBA and how much it's going to need to massively, massively, massively scale subscribers in order to pay for that deal. This is another huge expenditure, but it is another play to shore up the base, basically, and guarantee a baseline of subscribers.

8:53The downside, and I'd like to hear you speak about this, you were mentioning you do like sports analogies. I don't know if you ever read our website called Grantland that combines pop culture and sports. So does The Ringer, yeah. There is, that's true. Is there a version of this that this is Albert Pujols to the Angels? It's a really good question, man. And for those who don't watch baseball. Matt mentioned this in his piece where it's like there could be, despite all the public facing, like we just love Taylor. We just want to be in the Taylor business forever. That perhaps the Ellisons and Cindy Holland and the folks at Paramount felt like they had seen the best days of Taylor Sheridan.

9:35Yellowstone was a very expensive show that ended very poorly. A lot of these shows that he has on the air right now, you could make the argument are on their way to being finished or should be finished. So I think that within the realm of the reality of the TV show or the reality that the TV show Lioness has created, I think you could do one or two more seasons of Zoe Saldana trying to decide whether or not she wants to stay at home with Dave Annabelle or go out into the world and seduce women into becoming lionesses and attacking terrorists. Like there's like you could do that show for as long as you wanted.

10:17But like I felt your thumb on the scale there as to what you would prefer. But please continue. You do not even pretend to be. Kingstown's in season four. Obviously, Jeremy Renner, I guess, could just keep doing that show for as long as he wants. But of what I've seen of the fourth season, I think that's another one where maybe creatively it's kind of reaching an end. Also, it's worth noting that a lot of the stuff that maybe you're thinking is Taylor Sheridan is no longer Taylor Sheridan. He's not really writing on Mayor of Kingstown. He doesn't work on Tulsa King. Some of the Yellowstone spinoffs have different showrunners attached and Taylor Sheridan's not writing any of the scripts.

10:53Now, he wrote all of Landman season two. So he is heavily involved in a bunch of stuff. But from the Paramount side, I guess I could see them saying, we feel like we've seen his best days and he is expensive. And his shows, as Matt reported, between$15 and$20 million per episode for some of these shows. They're massively expensive. He shoots on his own property. So there's a lot of kickback action going there. That's my description of it, not Matt's. but I can make the argument otherwise I can make a pretty strong argument for the future for him too and it's worth noting, it's not just Taylor it's his long time producing partner, David Glasser whose 101 Studios is branded on every one of these programs I think that that last point is interesting and it's certainly something that I bet that deep background or maybe not even that deep background Paramount shills will start spinning which is it already had become a you know that they are in business with Taylor Sheridan Taylor Sheridan in no way works for them they are basically partners with him and his enterprises which means accepting uh episodic uh budgets that are I mean the numbers you're quoting those are the numbers that HBO spends on House of the Dragon right like those are the highest level of episodic numbers that we usually get and you know it's there aren't I mean I haven't seen a lot of the Yellowstone spinoffs but I don't think there are a lot of dragons in them.

12:16I know there are a lot of like... No, but I mean, I can see why 1883 and 1923 cost a lot of money, but I think that they're referring more to things like Lioness, where he's got like friggin' gunships flying over. Yeah. And the other thing is, he doesn't... You know what? I was about to couch this as if we don't really know. I think I feel definitive in saying he doesn't take a lot of notes. And I can't imagine any long-standing relationship structures that he felt the need to respect or grudgingly accept a note here or there from, those aren't going to exist in his new operation. It is basically a fiefdom within the larger Comcast Universal properties.

12:55So it's massive. And it definitely is going to be framed as a, did Ellison take his eye off the ball by pursuing the Duffer brothers and promising them their follow-up to Stranger Things? and cinematic releases? And did he feel slighted by that? Is it going to be a David Benioff and D.B. Weiss situation where Netflix swoops in, pays them untold millions to make the follow-up to Game of Thrones, spends untold millions on it, and you end up with two seasons of a, I still think kind of intriguing, but I don't think the general marketplace feels like it was a particularly successful show. um chris we're we're doing the head i want you to do the heart what does your heart say about this well as always for you as a fan and for yeah i find him fascinating i find this decision fascinating i think as far as creators in the current tv landscape goes he he strikes me as relatively unique because not only is he so prolific he's essentially his own studio right Like he's got, um, obviously has sway with some pretty big names, John Hamm, Nicole Kidman, Billy Bob Thornton, you know, Samuel L.

14:13Jackson, Michelle Pfeiffer, Kurt Russell, like all of these people who are circling or attached to his projects. I'm very curious to see what happens by the way with how those people feel about their shows now that Taylor Sheridan may or may not be heavily involved in them you know I assume he is going to see out the contracted work that he has but like there's a big difference between Taylor Sheridan writing 10 hours of your show and writing the pilot you know so I'll be curious to watch that but I find it fascinating how he has also aside from all these stars like a kind of stock company that he works with a lot.

14:48There are a lot of faces that pop up in a bunch of his shows. He essentially has his own means of production by shooting on his own land in Texas. And I think is kind of a self-sufficient creator in that way. So all of that stuff I've always found fascinating as is the really wild swings and mood swings of his shows themselves, which I don't think are as easy to pin down as people who maybe only take a casual look at them might think. Outside of that, I find the destination, this is a little bit more head than heart, I find the destination pretty amusing, where he's going pretty amusing. Because one of the things that drove people a little bit nuts in the sort of emergence of Yellowstone and the emergence of Sheridan is the fact that Yellowstone was still streaming on Peacock.

15:37Peacock had made a deal in an earlier iteration in an earlier Paramount administration. They were like, well, we need money. So we'll be arms dealers as well as a studio. And they sold off the streaming rights to Paramount, I'm sorry, to Yellowstone to Peacock. So while Peacock has been airing, you can only watch Yellowstone streaming on Peacock despite the fact that it was basically the flagship show of Paramount Plus, if you understand what I mean. So all of the spinoffs, all of that stuff, it airs on the Paramount network. But when you want to watch it on two days after it's been aired, you go to Peacock to do it.

16:17So now he is in a weird way coming home. I am very interested to see whether or not this changes the kind of stuff he does. And also whether or not he actually takes a step away from the amount of TV he's been making and goes back to features. because I've long been very interested in his TV work, but I think his features are absolutely, inarguably better. Hell or High Water, Wind River, Sicario. He is an incredibly talented feature script writer. And if Donna Langley came in and said, let's do a bunch of different stuff together here. Why don't we make some movies? That would be actually creatively probably the most exciting thing for me.

17:06You know, in Matt's reporting, he mentioned that one of the things that happened that sort of sent this sideways was apparently, according to Matt, Paramount trying to get involved in the streaming rates to a movie that Taylor had going at Warner Brothers. And Paramount was like, well, we'll distribute it. And he was not a fan of that. And then according also to Matt, he was not a fan of the fact that he found out secondhand that Nicole Kidman had signed up to do another Paramount show outside of Lioness. So it just goes to show you that these things are all very delicate, no matter how rich and how powerful people are.

17:45Like there are still egos and there are still little like comedies of manners taking place with the biggest stakes. Can I give you the best case scenario here in my mind for Peacock, which is plucky, like no pun intended, like has reasons to watch it, has reasons to keep subscribing to it. what I find interesting about it is that for as long as I've been writing about TV and we've been talking about on the podcast, I think we often go back to this idea that unlike a lot of the streaming services, certainly all of them when they launched, NBC has always had a pretty strong brand identity. And what was challenging about the early days of Peacock is that they didn't seem to track one-to-one.

18:31I would argue that we are starting to see that shape take hold a little bit more in a way that I think is smart and potentially sustainable. And I say that without Matt's expertise of any of the actual financial stuff that gets things done these days. So I have no idea. I keep referring to it, but like the financial numbers of the NBA deal are like terrifying, even if you don't fully understand what they mean. But what I mean is you are starting to see the contours of a streaming service that does a little bit of everything and feels a little bit like comfortable TV. It has all the Bravo reality shows and the traders, which are good business and Andy Cohen and all that stuff.

19:09It has the comedy legacy. So it has streaming Parks and Rec streaming The Office and they've doubled down on that or at least accentuated it by the paper, which I think is really good and fits right into the people who are like, oh, what's your next watch? It has the Dick Wolf universe of all those Chicago shows, all the Law and Order shows, and it has NBA basketball, it has football, and now you add Taylor Sheridan, the Taylor Sheridan Plank, which is a, you know, or could or should be a dependable type of show with a dependable type of viewer. And if you squint, you see it, especially because in the background of all this, and maybe it's better served in the background, the original programming department has a bunch of kind of wild swings coming up.

19:49There's The Miniature Wife, which is a very strange sounding comedy with Elizabeth Banks and Matthew McFadden. there's a again what sounds like a very creative spy show called ponies coming with amelia clark um if you look at their original slate it is not playing it safe and it's interesting to see the kind of like stabilizing guardrails of all this other stuff go up around it um is that a strategy to survive in this consolidating insane economy i don't know but i'm interested what do you think if you're obviously for our listeners who don't know about the vagaries of overall deals and development deals and things like that.

20:27Okay, so it's late 2025 now. Taylor Sheridan has a bunch of shows either hitting the airwaves, about to hit the airwaves, or scheduled to hit the airwaves next year. Presumably Landman will retain its audience, let's just say, and there will be desire for a third season of that. Sure. Realistically, does Taylor Sheridan start handing off duties to some of these shows to a non-existent coaching tree because unlike lots of showrunners, I would say I can't really identify a ton of people who have come out from under Taylor Sheridan to have their own thing. This is not Chris Carter to Vince Gilligan to the Breaking Bad Mafia.

21:10This is a guy who writes his shit. The reason why the baseball analogy doesn't work is because when Albert Pujols signed with the Angels, he didn't continue to provide batting services to the Cardinals for the next two years. do you know what i mean like it doesn't work like that yeah the way contracts work generally is you are contracted you're still connected and you are still producing the shows that predate your new deal um hearing about for example um francesca sloan leaving mr mrs smith season two at amazon and presumably an overall deal that she may have had to go work on big little lies season three at HBO isn't as common as I think you often would think like in so doing she left immediately and she is no longer involved in Mr.

21:57Mrs. Smith season two. Um, the two year window. I don't know if there's going to be like negotiations or wiggle room, but he loves Landman and America loves Landman and Chris Ryan loves Landman. So I don't know if I just think he would make it. Yeah. I, I, I'd be eager to hear experts who listen to our podcast. Well, I was also going to ask you like, like, Does he start working on things for Peacock now? And when the calendar flips to 2028, he's like, I have five shows? So for what it's worth, the streamers are already scheduling for 2028. That's already happening. I know it feels far away for us.

22:37Interminable if you read political news, but that is where these people are. So the question is, do they want something from him on the air in 2028? And I imagine they do. and I truly do not know contractually what services he can provide to what because I think the goal would be to have stuff on the air as soon as possible to maximize what is no doubt an enormous spend. But I think it's a two-track thing. Pitching things or developing things or slow walking things or redirecting things. A lot of pitching going on. Exactly. Telling them what he's going to be doing would probably make sense right now.

23:16Yeah. Okay. I'm curious. Yeah, because that would be the... It's almost like, you know, it's not like pencils up when 2028 rolls around. I'm sure there are going to be things in the flow. But like you mentioned, Ryan Murphy has stuff still airing on FX, you know, and on Disney properties, you know, even though he's at Netflix. So we'll see what happens with that. One of the interesting things about the destination, about Taylor Sheridan's destination is... How it affects Comcast's standing in the last network standing sweepstakes. Because the long discussed talk of consolidation and contraction seems to finally be upon us.

24:01Andy and I, I made a joke about this last week, but then forgot to actually talk to you about it on the Thursday show. but last Tuesday David Zaslav came out and said because Paramount has made two bids for us I think upwards of$25 I think they're anticipating a third bid David Zaslav said we should look into selling some or all of this company, whatever is best for the shareholders, etc and has suggested it's been reported by Matt Bellany and others that there are other bidders kicking the tires outside of Paramount. Now, they may not be anywhere close to the consistently throwing down money like the way Paramount is and saying, how about$25 a share or whatever it is.

24:53But there are rumored to be offers incoming or being considered from Amazon, MGM, from even Netflix, even though the Netflix co-CEO, Greg Peters, has kind of been like, mergers don't really work. You know, and then we like to build things rather than buy things. And Apple, and of course, Comcast Universal. Now, I think everybody took it as a fait accompli that Paramount was going to do this because they were the ones who seemed to be showing up at the table with a bag of money. But as Matt pointed out, and as anybody who read the story about Taylor Sheridan can figure out, you don't do this if you think you're going to be closing up shop or sixth place or some small fry streaming network.

25:42You don't go out and get Taylor Sheridan in the NBA and then say, oh man, well, David Ellison is here. So I guess I just have to be happy showing below deck reruns. This feels like a significant power up move by Comcast Universal. The reason why I bring all of this up, I want to get your impression of the Warner Brothers sale in general, although I know it's a difficult or complicated conversation to have given some of your employment. I'll speak about that. Yeah. But yeah, I think two weeks ago, I was like, this is going to be like when Ellison bought Paramount where we pretend like it may or may not happen, but it's always going to happen.

26:23It was always going to happen. And one of the reasons why I think it's the most likely to happen is just because he seems to have the quickest pathway to yes from the White House right now. So that would be very helpful. But we'll see. I mean, I'm very curious to know what you think about this. Well, a couple of things. Like, I don't know how often I should be or should not be doing this. But like, the caveat or the disclosures is like, I work for some of these companies. And currently, I'm working for more than one of them. And I'm in England right now working for Warner Brothers Discovery. I have a project at Universal.

27:02I have worked for most of these companies, but never Paramount at times. And all I can say is, I feel like my track record of being honest, sometimes painfully so, is pretty consistent. And that's pretty much all I'm capable of doing or wired to do. Um, I, so I'll continue to do that and just speak as freely as I feel that I'm capable of speaking. So, um, I think there are multiple ways into the Warner brothers, um, sale. I think one of them is with, we were doing head versus heart stuff. The heart version of it is this is absolutely devastating and it sucks and it sucks for, um, emotional and cultural reasons.

27:45not because the Warner brothers themselves were like famously great guys, or they have an unparalleled a hundred year track record of success or like the time AOL bought them. But it is a legacy studio with a legacy footprint in an industry town that is feeling the ground fallout from under it. And particularly in a year when HBO has continued to produce phenomenal shows test just ended a week ago in a year in which the heads of Warner Brothers films, Pamela Abdi and Mike DeLuca, and they're on an all-time heater. Or on an all-time heater in a way that has felt really inspiring, even to people who don't have any stake in Warner Brothers movies, because it felt like at the top of the year, the rumblings were that David Zaslav was going to replace them.

28:32And then every movie they've put into theaters, for the most part, has been a success. And they arguably laid out a blueprint for how to do it, where you mix... And had a market. Yeah. Like very crowd-pleasing IP like with originals, with big directors getting like a huge check to try and create some new IP of their own. So you get sinners, you get weapons, you get one battle after another. And all this happening, despite, you know, the studio being, you know, it's unluckily in the hands of someone who basically used the system very well to do something that is insane. which is to buy a successful media company with debt, which is what David Sasslove did, and then burdening this company with all this debt.

29:19And despite that, it still seems to be somehow staying afloat. So there have been smart people in the industry have said, oh, well, the only move going forward, this is even before the Discovery deal, will be Paramount and Warner Brothers somehow, only because they are legacy studios that can't really scale up without someone else. That's an important point that maybe we should just make to people who are not living in Los Angeles. And, and, you know, I think that the biggest thing for me is like what it would mean for the city and what it would mean for people who work in this industry. But beyond that, you know, what, what you have to understand is the reason what's animating all of this is that these studios are falling behind Netflix at like a pretty alarming pace, you know, in terms of their subscriber bases.

30:06And they can't compete with Apple. They can't compete with Amazon just financially and they don't have the legacy characters and IP and theme parks and cruises that Disney does. So they're always at a disadvantage that people saw coming from years back. I think it'll be interesting. There's already been some rumblings that the WGA or the Producers Guild, SAG, the unions might start flexing whatever muscles they feel they still have to disrupt this or stop this. I think that there's real concern that, okay, let's say Netflix buys Warner Brothers, and we don't know how real that interest is, but if Netflix buys Warner Brothers, is that the end of theatrical?