“There is no Season 2”: Taylor Sheridan Himself Shot Down a Sequel to One of His Greatest Shows Against the Network’s Wishes

There is no easy way to say it but Taylor Sheridan is a certifiable genius – the kind whose inventions do not draw ecstatic gasps or thunderous applause from the crowd but rather incite blasphemous outcries and send shockwaves powerful enough to disrupt the status quo of civilized society.

As such, Sheridan singlehandedly has the ability to stop the conveyor belt of studio production lineups or get them churning with a stroke of his pen and there arenʼt many people within the industry who hold that scale of authority or power over one studioʼs entire creative and bureaucratic system.

In one such situation (that proved the magnitude of his authority over his intellectual properties), Taylor Sheridan once shut down Paramountʼs demand to deliver an extension of his story despite the studio greenlighting Season 2 and ironically, the execs themselves coming up with storylines, plot points, and narratives to justify the arc for another season.

Taylor Sheridan Puts His Foot Down on the 1883 Storyline

There is not much in the field of literature and storytelling that evades the attention of Taylor Sheridan. Once an actor himself, the mind-numbing boredom and futility of having to go through innumerable subpar scripts gave him a masterclass on what not to do when writing a story that is supposed to engage the audience.

And so, when the duty fell on Sheridanʼs own broad shoulders, the visionary writer-director took it upon himself to avoid the pitfalls that so many writers and directors who came before him couldnʼt recognize or easily succumbed to. Given the temptations of being a studioʼs hot new property and the fame, relevance, and revenue that comes along with it, it is understandable why artists and creators never bite the hand that feeds them.

For Sheridan, however, having felt the oppression of a studio system, his fierce independence and complete authority over his IP mattered more than the goodwill of a major Hollywood powerhouse to back him. As such, when Paramount execs read the ending of his 1883 script, it was a bitter pill to swallow for the business-minded go-getters who are more concerned with profit than creative liberty.

Taylor Sheridan Silences a Paramount Studio Executive

With Yellowstone branching off into more than one spin-off prequel, Taylor Sheridan is more than just the hot new property at Paramount – he is the Biblical golden goose and even the thought of his sacrifice is sacrilegious to the studio executives. Sheridan, confident about the stories that are born from the depths of his imagination, then surprised the very execs whose arrogance made them presume a Season 2 was in order (a decision that was, no doubt, greenlit as soon as the viewership numbers were sent in by the accounts department).

According to a 2022 Deadline interview, Taylor Sheridanʼs script was a far throw from what the execs had in mind for their plans for the future of the studio. Sheridan revealed:

I know they read the scripts, but they don’t read scripts, so when they read the last episode of 1883, I don’t think they digested what had just happened, even though I made it quite clear from the very beginning. The story I heard is Bob Bakish watched it and said, ‘Wait a minute, she dies?! They all die? What do we do in season two?’ I said, ‘There is no season two.’ They’re like, ‘There better be a f—king season two because we already picked it up.’ I’m sitting here going, ‘Guys everyone is dead!’

However, Sheridan had no wish to extend the narrative of 1883 despite the studio executivesʼ unhelpful and tone-deaf input: “They wanted to have a meeting about how Sam Elliott survived his suicide. By the very nature of the term, it’s not something survivable, and who would want to see that?”

The disappointment suffered by Taylor Sheridanʼs refusal to supply a second season for 1883 gave the studios something far better to work with in return. The extension of the Dutton clan in 1923 (that was bred directly from the consequence of Sheridanʼs stand-off against the studio) led to a powerhouse duo involving Harrison Ford and Helen Mirren to grace the screens of Paramount+

1883 is currently streaming on Paramount+