“F**king killed me”: An Angelina Jolie Movie Forced Taylor Sheridan to Write Yellowstone Only on Saturdays, It Became the Best Ever Season of the Show

The untenable genius of Taylor Sheridan is such that when he picks up a project, the studio executives quietly slip out the back door, never to be seen again. In the recent past, the power and influence that the Yellowstone creator has amassed in Hollywood by reputation alone has allowed him to enjoy two things that other directors can only dream of – unlimited budget and unrestricted creative control.

The result of such heightened ambition paired with no censorship from the studio has conceived a fruitful relationship between Sheridan and Paramount, giving way to such masterpieces as 1883 and Mayor of Kingstown. However, even a genius such as Taylor Sheridan can falter at times, if not for the superhuman will that saved him from the clutches of Sons of Anarchy.

Taylor Sheridan’s Wild Tale Behind Yellowstone Season 3

Taylor Sheridan crash landed head first in Hollywood and took home an Oscar nomination on his way out. After being booted off-screen in Sons of Anarchy circa 2014, he debuted as a screenwriter with Sicario in 2015, followed by Hell or High Water in 2016, Wind River in 2017, and Yellowstone in 2018. In 2019, Warner Bros. acquired the rights to Michael Koryta’s novel, Those Who Wish Me Dead, which was then delegated to Taylor Sheridan as a writer and director of the film.

After a smooth-sailing 2-year run on Yellowstone, Sheridan was ordered to begin filming the Angelina Jolie-starring action thriller before stepping into Season 3 of the series. As a part of Warner Bros.’ planned expansion of HBO Max (now, Max) in 2021, the film was on schedule to be delivered by May 2021, which would then be released simultaneously on the streaming platform for a month.

Meanwhile, Sheridan was also contractually obligated to begin the production of Yellowstone Season 3 by 2021. What followed was a mad dash to the finish line, which witnessed a haggard Taylor Sheridan writing the scripts for Those Who Wish Me Dead, filming the movie for the week, returning home for the weekends, and penning the script for Yellowstone Season 3 – all at the same time.

Taylor Sheridan Pulls off the Impossible

Taylor Sheridan erupted in Hollywood the moment Sicario hit the ground running in all its stunning sepia-washed glory. The astronomical rise and success of the previously unknown and unheard-of Texan immediately caught the eyes of industry big-shots. It was natural for him to be neck-deep in projects in the formative years of his career as a writer and director.

But what Taylor Sheridan pulled off with Those Who Wish Me Dead and Yellowstone Season 3 is a saga for the history books. In an interview at Joe Rogan Experience, Sheridan revealed:

I was directing a movie with Angelina Jolie in New Mexico. They had a start date that, by God, they were gonna start… didn’t matter they didn’t have scripts, they were gonna start, and we would do night shoots, Friday night, finish about 7 in the morning, and I’d come home, and sleep till 2, wake up, have coffee, write the scripts [for Yellowstone S03] on Saturday till 1 or 2 in the morning, wake up Sunday, do it again, finish the script, send it off – 10 episodes, I did it 10 weeks in a row. F–king killed me.

In the end, while Those Who Wish Me Dead was a box office mess, earning the honor of the second-worst opening of all time [via Box Office Mojo] and a critically divisive film that was just as much praised as it was called out for being “a film with no real center” [via RogerEbert.com]

However, the surprise came a month later with the June debut of Yellowstone Season 3, which witnessed one of the best television spectacles ever made for human eyes. Considering the high-strung situation in which Sheridan delivered the 10 episodes of Yellowstone, only for it to turn out as the best season ever proves the inherent genius of the enigma that is part Hollywood elite and part cowboy rancher.

Yellowstone is available to stream on Paramount+