Netflix Is Turning The Western That Changed Taylor Sheridan's Life Into Yellowstone's Biggest Rival

Published Oct 6, 2026, 4:31 PM EDT Cathal Gunning has been writing about movies, television, culture, and politics online and in print since 2017. He worked as a Senior Editor in Adbusters Media Foundation from 2018-2019 and wrote for WhatCulture in early 2020. He has been a Senior Features Writer for ScreenRant since 2020. While the book that inspired Taylor Sheridan to create the entire Yellowstone franchise is set to be adapted to the screen soon, the prolific writer/director himself won’t be the one behind the camera this time around. Even compared to the show runner of Netflix’s historical romance Bridgerton, Shonda Rhimes, or the infamously prolific Ryan Murphy, who has a hand in everything from the 9-1-1 franchise to Netflix’s infamous four-season true crime anthology Monster, Taylor Sheridan is a busy man. The writer/director first rose to prominence back in the late 2010s with his screenplays for the movies Wind River, Sicario, and Hell or High Water, but it was the breakout success of his small-screen Neo-Western family saga Yellowstone that made Hollywood truly sit up and take notice. Yellowstone’s success spawned the prequels 1883 and 1923, and the show’s series finale was followed by two sequel shows, Dutton Ranch and the CBS procedural series Marshals. However, Sheridan’s TV takeover was only just beginning. In the years that followed, Sheridan parlayed the success of his five Yellowstone shows to get another seven scripted shows green lit. The prison drama Mayor of Kingstown, Lawmen: Bass Reeves, Tulsa King, its upcoming spinoff Frisco King, the spy thriller Lioness, the oil industry drama Landman, and the family melodrama The Madison round out Sheridan’s lengthy screen CV, and there’s no knowing if another show of his will be green lit before this article is published. As such, it is shocking that Sheridan isn’t the one bringing his all-time favorite novel, Lonesome Dove, to the screen. Lonesome Dove Directly Inspired Yellowstone, Now Netflix Is Bringing It To Streaming By zs93 MovieStillsDB.com Published in 1985, author Larry McMurtry’s Lonesome Dove is the first in a four-book series that also includes the novels Streets of Laredo, Dead Man’s Walk, and Comanche Moon. Set in the 1870s, the massive 800+ page book follows a handful of retired Rangers, including the aging Captain Woodrow F. Call and Captain Gus McCrae, as well as Joshua Deets and Pea Eye Parker, as they herd cattle from Texas to Montana. After show runner Zoe Kazan’s John Steinbeck adaptation East of Eden proved a critical success, she and Jed Stuart were announced as the co-showrunners of Netflix’s upcoming Lonesome Dove adaptation (via Tudum). As there are multiple books in the series, the series has franchise potential in a way that the inherently self-contained story of East of Eden never did. As such, Sheridan’s favorite book may well ironically become Yellowstone’s biggest rival. According to the Dallas Morning News, Sheridan said that reading McMurty’s Pulitzer Prize-winning book changed his life and set him on the path to his creative career when he was 19 in 1989. In between episodes of his 12 TV shows, Sheridan penned the foreword of Simon & Schuster's 40th anniversary edition of Lonesome Dove in 2025, where he said “To say it enthralled me, shocked me and shattered me is an understatement.” Interestingly enough, Sheridan notes in the same foreword that Lonesome Dove’s influence on him was the reason he didn’t pursue his plans of continuing his family’s business of law enforcement and cattle ranching. Between Yellowstone and its spinoff Marshals, he did, however, explore these jobs in fiction at length. Sheridan's foreword also calls The Perfect Storm screenwriter William D. Wittliff’s 1989 miniseries take on the book, “arguably the most literal and faithful adaptation of a novel to the screen in cinematic history.” Lonesome Dove Already Has A Faithful (& Brilliant) Adaptation Airing in four installments on CBS in 1989, Lonesome Dove had an all-star cast including Diane Lande, Anjelica Huston, Danny Glover, and Robert Duvall as Gus McCrae and Tommy Lee jones as Woodrow F. Call. The show was largely viewed as a critical darling and a massive mainstream succes. Since then, the presence of future stars like Eric McCormack, Chris Cooper, Steve Buscemi, and Margo Martindale in minor roles has only improved its already-superb reputation. As such, the bar is incredibly high for Kazan and Stuart’s reimagining. Now that the Yellowstone franchise has revived the Western on the small screen, Netflix’s Lonesome Dove could have a hard time outdoing Taylor Sheridan’s saga. Source: Dallas Morning News Tudum Release Date 1989 - 1989-00-00 Network CBS Directors Simon Wincer Cast Danny Glover Joshua Deets Writers William D. Wittliff