Writer Lauren J. Salkin has filed a lawsuit against Taylor Sheridan, accusing him of stealing his marquee series ‘Yellowstone’ from her 2016 pitch. 101 Studios, Paramount, and Elevate Entertainment are also listed as defendants in the lawsuit.

The lawsuit claims that Salkin pitched her own sprawling Western drama, ‘Sovereign Nation,’ to Sheridan’s management company, Elevate Entertainment, in 2016. According to the court documents, Salkin was told that Taylor Sheridan was unavailable for TV projects, but the suit claims that he was not unavailable and instead used Salkin’s copyrighted works to develop ‘Yellowstone.’

The lawsuit lists several ‘specific expressive choices’ that ‘Yellowstone’ allegedly lifted from Salkin’s ‘Sovereign Nation.’ These elements include a tribal casino functioning as the institutional center of political and development power, a signature confrontation staged in the tribal chairman’s casino office, and recurring master-plan imagery deployed to dramatize the struggle for territorial control.

Salkin’s lawyers also claim that she proposed Danny Huston and Gil Birmingham for ‘Sovereign Nation’ in her pitch deck. Both actors were later cast in ‘Yellowstone’ and played ‘materially parallel structural roles.’

The Lawsuit’s Key Allegations

The lawsuit alleges that Salkin’s ‘Sovereign Nation’ pitch was rejected by Sheridan’s management company in 2016. However, the suit claims that ‘Yellowstone’ was greenlit at Paramount ‘within months’ of Salkin’s rejection. The lawsuit also claims that Sheridan and others used Salkin’s copyrighted works to develop ‘Yellowstone.’

The suit states, ‘When the works are objectively compared, the same coordinated design repeatedly appears: casino-centered institutions organize political power; the same unusual land-development mechanisms propel the conflict; parallel scenes perform the same dramatic functions; and the same actors appear in materially parallel roles.’

Recurring Themes and Alleged Similarities

The lawsuit highlights several recurring themes and alleged similarities between ‘Sovereign Nation’ and ‘Yellowstone.’ These include:

• 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 expansion
• Recurring master-plan imagery deployed to dramatize the struggle for territorial control
• The use of Danny Huston and Gil Birmingham in ‘materially parallel structural roles’

The lawsuit is a significant development in the ongoing debate over the ownership and originality of ‘Yellowstone.’