Paramount+ will evidently enter an entirely different era of content when Taylor Sheridan leaves for NBCUniversal in a couple of years.
In case you missed the news, Taylor Sheridan will be leaving his entertainment home of Paramount for a deal with NBCUniversal. The creator, writer and director is expected to finish out his TV contract with Paramount (through the end of 2028) and then take his talents to NBC at the beginning of 2029.
Sources are saying that he’ll actually start making movies for NBCUniversal at the beginning of 2027, and that the movie side of the deal will run for eight years. On the other hand, the overall deal that Sheridan has struck up with NBCUniversal to make TV shows will start on January 1, 2029, and will reportedly stretch five years… paying Taylor Sheridan somewhere around $1 billion to make 20-plus shows.
Though 2029 might feel like a long way’s away, the higher ups at Paramount and Paramount+ are already preparing for the day that Sheridan walks out the door. Jane Wiseman, the Executive Vice President and Head of Originals, recently sat down with Deadline to talk about the streamer’s plan post-Taylor Sheridan.
Call it surprising, stupid, or perhaps, a smart move (only time will tell), but instead of trying to compete with Sheridan once he leaves… the streaming service is going to focus on content that’s completely different.
Cindy Holland, the Chair of Direct to Consumer at Paramount+, put the streamer’s pivot like this:
“We know that female forward ensemble shows, dramas, legal thrillers, soapy thrillers, are things that we were looking for.”
Taylor Sheridan is obviously known for more masculine shows like Landman, Mayor of Kingstown and Tulsa King (and obviously Yellowstone, but that wasn’t a Paramount+ original). But he’s also put forth some very female-forward programming like Lioness and The Madison.
Wiseman says that the streaming service already caters towards men with other programming, so once Taylor Sheridan exits, they don’t want to try and recreate the genre that she says is really his own:
“When we started, we felt like we had a great foundation. You can look at the shows that come from Taylor and 101, they get big audiences. We just launched Lioness. We’re really, really excited about the viewing that’s coming from that show, and it’s both female and male, but it’s definitely a genre, I mean, Taylor’s his own genre, if you think about it.
So we wanted to widen the aperture, and, knowing that you already have men and women coming to the service — we have men coming, we have UFC, we have football, sports, and then we have an unscripted offering that we know can bring in women — we wanted to build on that, it’s all about building.”
And Wiseman later said that the “female-forward” initiative encompasses all aspects of production. They saw the success of shows like The Madison, which was described as “female gaze oriented” when it came out, and want to dive all the way into that kind of creation:
“The female forward is in front of the camera, behind the camera, really getting women, intriguing them to come to the service and watch. And what was really exciting is that we just launched last spring The Madison and Dutton Ranch, which were from the Taylor Sheridan camp, but they over-indexed in women. So we felt like if you make shows for women, they will come.”
It’ll be interesting to see if that strategy pays off for Paramount+. Sure, The Madison and Dutton Ranch may have had higher female numbers than normal for a Taylor Sheridan production… but at the end of the day, it’s still a show with Sheridan’s name on it.
Can Paramount+ thrive without Sheridan? It’s interesting that they are admitting they don’t want to compete with the prolific creator once he leaves. But it could turn out to be the right move… because if TV consumers want something that feels like a Taylor Sheridan show, they’ll just go over to NBCUniversal and watch what he creates over there.
