Amazon wants to take a stab at creating its own Yellowstone, and the streaming platform has reportedly turned to True Detective creator Nic Pizzolatto to get the job done. The untitled project has a series commitment and is being “fast-tracked,” according to The Hollywood Reporter, which obtained a tentative synopsis of Amazon’s attempt to capitalize on the Western genre:
It revolves around a former outlaw who must reckon with a threat from his past in order to keep the life and family he has worked so hard to build. He sets out on an epic journey that unites a formidable gang of indelible figures to face an even greater danger, in an epic saga of adventure and romance that forces this former criminal to become the hero he’s been pretending to be.
The Western project came together after Pizzolatto exited his first-look deal with Disney/FX, which would’ve re-teamed the writer with Matthew McConaughey for a series called The Redeemer. However, the show never came to be when McConaughey walked, making Pizzolatto a free agent again.
As for Pizzolatto’s involvement with True Detective, which will soon drop a fourth season, he’s credited on the show as an executive producer “though he is not creatively involved at all,” according to THR. HBO owns the rights to the franchise, which is now being run by Barry Jenkins. In short, Pizzolatto has a lot of time to mount a challenge to Taylor Sheridan’s Yellowstone empire that’s in wobbly shape thanks to rumors that Kevin Costner could be exiting the flagship series over a scheduling dispute.
(Via The Hollywood Reporter)