Yellowstone creator Taylor Sheridan will put his most well-known series to rest this fall, which is also the season when he will debut his next star-studded offshoot. Landman isn’t quite considered even Yellowstone-adjacent, yet the series will surely have the trademark touches of a Sheridan show. As always, this prolific screenwriter has penned another adventure that captures a quintessential part of the American essence, and co-star Jon Hamm has made it known that this is not a cowboy-focused show.
Of course, Landman is likely to include a fair amount of cowboy boots and hats like Tulsa King does (and Sylvester Stallone’s show will return on September 15 because this Paramount+ king does not rest), but in vastly different settings. Let’s round up what to expect on this show, starting with the cast:
Cast
Sometime in the future, somebody will attempt to pinpoint the most storied cast of any Taylor Sheridan series, and Landman will surely hit the top three. First, a certain 1883 actor flowed so well with the Yellowstone creator that Sheridan wrote the Tommy Norris role specifically for Billy Bob Thornton. He has portrayed unruly characters (Bad Santa) and written captivating characters of his own accord (Sling Blade) and won one of TV’s highest acting honors (Fargo), but here, Billy Bob will portray a unique but wholly American beast: a wheeling and dealing oil company crisis manager.
Additionally, every show is better with a dose of Michael Peña, who will portray “veteran roughneck” Armando Medina. Jon Hamm will star as oil-industry king Monty Miller (an ally of Tommy), and his wife, Cami, will be portrayed by Demi Moore, who’s having quite a year between her Sheridan debut and with The Substance. Additionally, Tommy’s private life will be under the microscope with his ex-wife portrayed by Ali Larter, who will very much be on the scene, as revealed in a Vanity Fair photo reveal. Their young adult children will be portrayed by Michelle Randolph and Jacob Lofland.
Other cast members include Andy Garcia and Paulina Chávez with locally-based extras for filming oil-field and college-campus scenes.
Plot
Landman is based upon the hit Boomtown podcast and arrives with a synopsis that sets the show “in the proverbial boomtowns of West Texas” as “a modern-day tale of fortune seeking in the world of oil rigs.” Further, this is an “upstairs/downstairs story of roughnecks and wildcat billionaires fueling a boom so big, it’s reshaping our climate, our economy and our geopolitics.”
Thornton recently told TV Insider that he and Sheridan had an early-on conversation about Norris’ feeling that he could have had everything in life, but due to various circumstances, that didn’t happen, and he’s very aware of the situation: “Taylor said to me one day, ‘When you go over to this house, and you think of where you live, you’re looking around, and you think: I could have had this – but it went a different direction.’”
Demi Moore further revealed to Deadline that the “boomtown of Fort Worth, Texas” will reveal “kind of this subculture that we haven’t seen before, which is what I think Taylor does so well.” Additionally, Moore promises that in addition to “really exploring the issues around oil, petroleum, on all sides,” there will be plenty of “delicious drama within and family dynamics.” Will there be an endangered ranch somewhere on the peripheral, too? Hopefully, there will be some Yellowstone Easter eggs in there somewhere.
We do know, however, that Billy Bob has something in common with Stallone, who described this filming experience as too hot to handle, temperature wise. In fact, Thornton admitted to Vanity Fair that certain scrubland scenes were “probably” the toughest type of filming that he’s ever physically done. The crew even nearly passed out on a day that Thornton had to run in 100 degree weather in high humidity while wearing cowboy boots on “caliche roads,” which does sound like hell on earth. That’s a day in the life of, according to Jon Hamm, “oil speculators and what they called landmen, which are the guys that run around and try to acquire mineral rights and land rights.”
Release Date
Hold onto your boots, this Paramount+ series will premiere on November 17.
Trailer
The first teaser trailer promises a gripping ride for Sheridan-heads.