A copyright lawsuit filed on Friday alleges that screenwriter and producer Taylor Sheridan created the television series “Yellowstone” using material from a pitched project belonging to writer Lauren J. Salkin. The complaint names Sheridan, 101 Studios, Paramount and Elevate Entertainment as defendants. According to court documents, Salkin submitted her Western drama concept titled “Sovereign Nation” to Elevate Entertainment, Sheridan’s management company, in 2016. She subsequently received a rejection response stating that Sheridan was unavailable for television projects at that time.
The lawsuit contends that despite this stated unavailability, “Yellowstone” was greenlit at Paramount within months of Salkin’s pitch rejection. The series premiered on Paramount Network on June 20, 2018. The suit identifies numerous thematic and structural elements that allegedly appear in both projects, including a tribal casino serving as a center of political authority, conflicts over territorial expansion beyond reservation boundaries, and specific land-development mechanisms involving trust land and 99-year lease structures.
Salkin’s legal team points to casting decisions as additional evidence of similarity. The suit notes that Salkin proposed actors Danny Huston and Gil Birmingham for her original pitch, both of whom were later cast in “Yellowstone” in roles described as materially parallel to those outlined in the “Sovereign Nation” concept. The lawsuit emphasizes that the confluence of identical institutional setups, identical plot mechanisms, parallel character roles, and overlapping casting choices, combined with the timing and access to the material, supports an inference of copying rather than coincidental similarity within the Western drama genre.
Representatives for all named defendants declined to comment on the allegations at the time of reporting.
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