Could Arnold Schwarzenegger be a long-lost Dutton relative?
If Costner says “Hasta la vista, baby,” to Yellowstone, maybe Arnold Schwarzenegger could step in for the final batch of episodes? In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, the Austrian action star indicated that he’d love to get in the Taylor Sheridan business. “I think he’s very talented,” Schwarzenegger said of Sheridan. “And the cast on [Yellowstone] is phenomenal.”
While Schwarzenegger has spent most of his acting career on the big screen, he’s getting into the streaming game with the eight-episode action series, Fubar, which premiered on Netflix on May 25. And not for nothing, but his ’80s rival Sylvester Stallone already has his own Sheridan-created Paramount+ show, Tulsa King. “Today, I see much more of other people’s performances than I did in the ’80s, when I was only seeing myself,” the ex-Terminator said. “I was thinking: ‘I have to win.’ It was a competition against Sly, against others. ‘I have to be number one.'”
What’s in a name?
Kindergarten teachers, prepare to welcome a whole bunch of “Duttons” to your classes in about five years. The Yellowstone family’s last name is now a popular first name choice for new parents. According to the Social Security Administration’s rankings of popular baby names, Dutton leap-frogged from 1,821st place in 2021 to 835th place last year.
Meanwhile, sources close to Costner tell Us Weekly that he’s as “disappointed” as Yellowstone fans are about the extensive delays holding up the rest of the fifth and final season. “The holdup is not coming from Kevin,” insists the source, claiming that it’s all “beyond his control.” (Costner is in the midst of directing the ambitious feature film project, Horizon.) The fact that Paramount has scheduled a November premiere date for the remaining episodes suggests that the rest of the cast may soon be heading to Montana… and maybe also a place that’s closer to Sheridan’s heart.
Taylor Sheridan’s ranch life
In 2021, Sheridan purchased Texas’s historic Four Sixes Ranch for a reported $320 million, one of several ranches he now owns in the state. And he’s put all those properties to work for him. According to the Wall Street Journal, Sheridan has used several of his ranches as shooting locations for various Yellowstone-related shows, billing Paramount for up to $50,000 a week. Additionally, his ranches run “Cowboy Camps” to get actors in riding shape and he also rents cattle herds to his own shows at $25 a head.
While the mothership Yellowstone series is largely filmed in Montana, the Journal reported that expenses have trickled in from Sheridan’s Texas properties, including a $3,000 time card from his personal horse wrangler. Appearing before cattle owner convention earlier this year, the prolific writer reportedly said: “There’s nothing better than a movie company showing up and filming for about a month and paying you a bunch of money and leaving. It’s about the greatest deal going.”
A Paramount spokeswoman told the Journal that “there are parameters in place to make effective cost decisions,” while David Glasser — who runs 101 Studios, which produces Yellowstone — said that Sheridan is attentive to budget concerns. “He is not writing ‘shoot at my ranch’ in the script. Those demands are never made. When the [line producer] or I go to Taylor and ask him to cut a day out of the schedule for budget purposes, he is more than willing to accommodate.”
It’s worth noting that one of Sheridan’s upcoming Paramount+ shows is 6666 and will tell the centuries-spanning story of the Four Sixes Ranch that he now owns. We’ll have to wait and see whether that one will be “filmed on location.”
Sheridan’s strike silence
While some high-profile writer-producers like Andor’s Tony Gilroy and Stranger Things’s Duffer Brothers stepped away from showrunning duties during the WGA strike, Sheridan has yet to express a public opinion about whether or not he’ll be joining a picket line. And his silence hasn’t gone unnoticed by those in the press.
This story was originally published on May 19, 2023 and has been updated with new information.
