Taylor Sheridan May Have Set Script Writing Record With Sylvester Stallone Show ‘Tulsa King’

Taylor Sheridan wrote the first draft pilot script for king of tulsa in less than 24 hours.

At least that’s the story told by his producing partner David Glasser. And it certainly seems possible given Sheridan’s hyper-prolific reputation – the Yellowstone The co-creator has seven shows in various stages of development at Paramount, and he’s writing a slew of episodes himself. He is known to isolate himself for periods at a time, relentlessly focusing on writing stories.

Glasser says that on a Friday night in 2021, he casually mentioned to Sheridan that Sylvester Stallone had always wanted to play a mobster. “Taylor starts spitting out the idea of ​​a fish out of water story for an hour,” Glasser recalled. “Then, Saturday afternoon at 4 p.m., he says, ‘Check your inbox. There is a script he has already written called King of Kansas City and it’s amazing.

The duo pitched the idea to Stallone that Monday, then secured Emmy winner Terence Winter to creatively take on the project’s lead as showrunners. Winter says Sheridan only met him once and then moved on to his other projects. “Taylor said, ‘It’s your baby, I just have visitation rights,'” Winter recalled.

Actor/writer/director Stallone had long dreamed of a Sopranos-role. The 76-year-old is acutely aware – through a long string of hits and misses over nearly six decades in film – of the types of roles that best suit his towering frame. A gangster, yes. “Yo Paulie! It could work.

king of tulsa follows a mobster named Dwight “The General” Manfredi, who is released from prison after 25 years and is soon exiled by his crime family to Oklahoma. The role allows Stallone to do what he does best: play a badass who has a lot more trouble getting himself behind his brown eyes than everyone around him realizes. Still, he had some notes.

“In the original concept, Dwight was a rogue,” Stallone says. “A tough, strong guy. His name was like Tony or Sal – that sort of thing. Then we started adding things like, how do you introduce sentimentality into this? It’s about the journey. It’s the inability to be recognized or taken seriously, or pride or hope – that sort of thing.

Winter was also keen to avoid dramatic Mafia shots after her acclaimed work on The Sopranos and Boardwalk Empire. “It felt like a new path into familiar territory,” said Winter, who only met Sheridan once throughout the first season. “The genius of Taylor’s pilot is that it’s a marriage of two genres: western and gangster film.”

Winter changed the setting of the story from Kansas City — which seemed too urban and mob-y — to Tulsa. “It didn’t seem far enough away,” Winter says. “The New Yorker in me started thinking, ‘Okay, what does the middle of nowhere look like? I looked at the map and I was like, ‘Oklahoma.

While Sheridan took a hands-off approach to his project, Stallone was the opposite – which occasionally sparked a bit of creative friction behind the scenes. On The Sopranos, Winter was accustomed to a cast that adheres to every word of his scripts. “It was word for word,” Winter says of the HBO series. “Every pause, every ‘uh’, every ‘you know’ – that’s it [in the scripts].”

But Stallone was never more than a dedicated performer. He has 42 writing credits (including an Oscar nomination for his Rocky script) and often reworks the projects when he joins them. “The beauty of working with Terry is that some of our ideas overlap,” Stallone says. “Usually they are very strict about following what is written on the page. But I tend to go off the page once in a while and add ad-libs. They were a little disturbed at first.

Winter says he viewed Stallone’s contribution as an advantage. “With Stallone, you get a writer, a director, a producer, an editor,” he says. “He has great ideas and he has strong opinions about things, and he’s been doing that for a very long time at the highest possible level. He’s also been in his shoes for so long that he knows what works and knows what’s going on. ‘He does well.

Stallone was particularly focused on editing, Glasser notes. “He was heavily involved in the editing process, and it’s fascinating to watch him make these tough decisions where it’s not just about his character but about the universe of the world.”

The biggest challenge for Stallone was the show’s commitment. The actor says his dedication to his career has disrupted his family life – days after production on the show ended in August, his wife of 25 years, Jennifer Flavin, filed for divorce (they have since reconciled ). “You call it a season,” Stallone says, “I call it doing 10 sequels.”

Winter says the result is worth it. “You’re going to see colors in him that you’ve never seen,” Winter says. “I’m really excited for people to see how funny and charming and emotional he becomes. He has to do things on this show that he’s never done, ever.

For Paramount+, king of tulsa represents the last of his soaring Sheridan verse, which now counts up to seven shows that even begin to overlap (king of tulsa will take place in tandem with Yellowstone Season Five). Glasser expects their streak of landing Stallone-like movie stars for TV roles to continue (which began with Yellowstoneby Kevin Costner and then sees Harrison Ford in his upcoming limited series prequel 1923). “Taylor has the ability to say, ‘Come try your luck with me, and you’ll feel like you’re on a film set,'” Glasser says. “You’re going to see even more come to the table who want to be part of his incredibly rich material.”

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This story first appeared in the November 9 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.