Taylor Sheridan is famously known as the creator of Yellowstone and all of its subsequent spinoffs… but one person has set out to prove that he didn’t actually come up with the Kevin Costner-led drama.
It’s crazy to think that, at one point, the idea for Yellowstone was… just an idea. That’s how every great thing starts, and as all know, the TV series grew into something bigger than itself. Though Yellowstone and its multiple spinoffs (1883, 1923, Marshals, Dutton Ranch) are now considered to be some of the most popular and most watched shows on TV, there’s one person that despised seeing the billion dollar brand be built out.
Lauren J. Salkin.
The TV writer recently filed a complaint in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California. She’s suing Taylor Sheridan, Paramount, and NBCUniversal, and she’s claiming that Sheridan stole Yellowstone right from under her nose. In the complaint, Salkin says she she submitted a pilot script, a pitch deck, and a show bible (reference document that lays out concepts, characters, settings, etc.) to Sheridan’s reps in late 2016 for a series she titled (and copyrighted as) Sovereign Nation.
The complaint laid out that timeline, and also says that Salkin’s idea for her TV show was suspiciously close to the main storylines in the western drama:
“(Sovereign Nation) is a dramatic television series centered on tribal governance, casino-driven economic power and a modern war over land and development.”
That’s definitely a part of the Yellowstone plot, eh? Of course Yellowstone is more about the Dutton family, with the Broken Rock tribe being a part of the story, but not all of it.
Salkin is arguing that she has the right to some of the profits of the series due to “copyright infringement and injunctive relief preventing future infringement,” and is seeking damages of an unknown amount. She and her legal team point to the expressive choices that she laid out in show she claims she sent to Sheridan a year or two before Yellowstone premiered.
According to the complaint, those “expressive choices” are:
-A tribal casino functioning as the institutional center of political and development power
-A signature confrontation staged in the tribal chairman’s casino office over expansion beyond reservation boundaries
-The use of trust land
-The absence of zoning restrictions and a 99-year lease structure as the concrete mechanism for that expansion
-Recurring master-plan imagery deployed to dramatize the struggle for territorial control
Though all of this is just an allegation at the moment, Salkin will certainly have an argument if they can prove that a) her story that predates Yellowstone contained the framework for the show that went on to shoot Sheridan to superstardom and b) Sheridan’s management company, Elevate Entertainment, received the pilot (and other show materials) and ended up basing their own show on it without crediting Salkin.
The complaint admits that the TV writer isn’t suing because Sheridan created a Western, and that’s what Sovereign Nation would have been. The problem lies with the distinct choices in Salkin’s pilot and show bible that she claims went on to act as major plot points for Yellowstone:
“Copyright law does not protect the abstract idea of a Western, a land dispute, an Indian casino or a powerful family — and that is not Plaintiff’s claim. The infringement alleged here lies in the copying of Salkin’s particular expressive choices and their coordinated selection and arrangement.”
Sheridan, Paramount and NBCUniversal have not responded to the lawsuit or allegations as of yet. But it appears that some real life drama about who actually came up with the Dutton storyline could be brewing, and rival the drama that Yellowstone fans watched play out on screen for five seasons (and continue throughout various spinoffs).
