NBCUniversal Entertainment chair Donna Langley managed to snag “Yellowstone” creator Taylor Sheridan away from Paramount after a decade at the studio. How did she do it? By putting an emphasis on the film of his lucrative long-term TV and film pact.
\n\nLangley said her pursuit of Sheridan began after she “saw an opportunity” created by “disruption and instability” at Paramount. While never explicitly mentioning it, she was most likely referring to the turbulent yearlong merger process between Paramount Skydance and Warner Bros. News of Sheridan’s deal broke in late October of 2025, only months before David Ellison emerged victorious over Netflix in the battle for WB.
\n\n“There’s just a moment to kind of look around the marketplace and see if there’s a competitive advantage,” Langley said during her interview at Bloomberg’s Screentime event on Thursday afternoon. “But really, where I started talking to Taylor was about film, because I knew that he had a film deal at Paramount, but it was a first-look deal. Didn’t have as many teeth to it as his television deal. That’s how it started, and then we just got to talking and one thing led to another.”
\n\nThe film component of Sheridan’s NBCUniversal deal is…
Original source: https://variety.com/v/tv/