Yellowstone ‘1883’ Cancelled, Not Renewed for Season 2 at Paramount

It’s no secret that Yellowstone’s latest prequel series, 1923, was arguably the most anticipated shows of this past winter.

The numbers say it all, as the show wracked up a whooping 7.4 million views during its premiere, shattering the record for most watched series premiere in Paramount history. And now, Yellowstone fans are just as eager for Season 2, which should be filming this spring.

Needless to say, Sheridan has found himself a gold mine once again. Set in the 1920s and led by famed actors Harrison Ford and Helen Mirren as Jacob and Cara Dutton, the show documents the struggles of the next generation of the Dutton family.

Following the end of World War I, ahead of the Great Depression (although Montana saw it’s own depression about 10 years before the rest of the country), in the midst of the Prohibition Era, and following the Spanish Flu… it was a time when the cultural landscape of America was shifting. Wealthy folks were thriving, and immigrants and poor folks were busting their asses to survive.

The history of the era is a lot to unpack, but Taylor Sheridan is giving it his best shot. Although it’s easy to see this series is gonna be a success, it was no easy path in the making of this show.

Sheridan sat down for an interview with Deadline to discuss the show, what we may be able to expect, and the absolutely insane production value of 1923.

He argues that that 1883 was probably the most expensive first season of a show ever:

“I’m going to tell you and you can tell by watching… I would argue that ‘1883’ was the most expensive first season of a TV show ever made.

This was much more expensive. Much more expensive. I don’t know what the ‘Game of Thrones’ budgets were, but I don’t know how they could have been more than this.”

And 1923? Even bigger.

He calls it the Lawrence Of Arabia of television shows:

“You saw six thousand sheep, three thousand cattle, and as this show keeps going, you’re in Africa. All real. You know how hard it is to move a crew around in Africa in 2022 with Covid, and all the rules and all the politics?

We were in four countries in Africa. It’s not like we went to one little preserve in South Africa. We were in four different countries. South Africa, Kenya, Tanzania, Zanzibar, which is actually part of Tanzania, so that doesn’t really count. So, three. Am I missing one?”

Taylor Sheridan’s reputation, and track record of success over the past few years, has Paramount handing him blank checks to create these monstrous television shows that really only run for one season.

Taylor has been very vocal about not telling every single detail about the Dutton family, but rather, giving little peeks into the window at different points in time. 1883 was one season long, and was always going to be one season long.

The same goes for 1923, except, he’s gonna need a little more than 10 episodes to tell the story. So call it one two-part season, or call it two seasons… the story has already been written.

Taylor admitted that he didn’t have 1923 as mapped out in his head as he did with 1883:

“This one is different than 1883 where I had the whole thing blocked out in my head. This one, I had no idea what I was going to do. I just went on a journey myself and I’m the one that made the call to the network, which is probably the greatest call they ever got.

Hey, I need to make more episodes to finish this story. I need to do this in two blocks. An eight episode block and a second eight episode block to wrap this up. I can’t wrap it up in two episodes and do the story justice. For them, it is great because they get more content. For me, I get more runway.”

But the price tag is STEEP:

“So, that’s the thing about Paramount that’s been so great for me. They’re so malleable to the storyteller, or at least to me as the storyteller. They will add episodes because I need it to tell the story.

You think about when you talk about a show that’s costing $30 million to $35 million an episode and you just asked for eight more episodes, I didn’t do very good in math in school, but I can multiply eight and three and add a bunch of zeroes and realize I just asked for 240 million dollars.”

And perhaps the most hilarious part of the entire endeavor was that Paramount executives were expecting a second season of 1883. But there was only one problem… everybody died.

Bob Bakish, the President and CEO of Paramount Global, about lost his mind when he got to the 1883 season finale. They even wanted Taylor to write a second season where Sam Elliott’s character Shea Brennan somehow survived his suicide attempt so they could do a second season.

That’s where 1923 came into the picture:

“I know they read the scripts, but they don’t read scripts, so when they read the last episode of 1883, I don’t think they digested what had just happened, even though I made it quite clear from the very beginning.

The story I heard is Bob Bakish watched it and said, ‘wait a minute, she dies! They all die? What do we do in season two?’ I said, ‘there is no season two.’ They’re like, ‘there better be a fu*king season two because we already picked it up.’ I’m sitting here going, ‘guys everyone is dead.’

They wanted to have a meeting about how Sam Elliott survived his suicide. By the very nature of the term it’s not something survivable, and who would want to see that? So, I said I’ll come up with another peek into the window and I sat there and tried to look at it.

I studied Montana’s history and the history of the world. Covid was ending, which is a very similar thing to World War I, because after World War I ended, about a half a year later the Spanish Flu arrived and it killed 100 times what our Covid-19 did.”

And 1923 was born.

A $30 million dollar per episode, monstrous endeavor that will show us the next chapter of the Dutton family. Spanning multiple continents, and multiple struggles that early Western settlers faced, it has the potential to be Taylor Sheridan’s best work to date… even better than Yellowstone.