Taylor Sheridan, Paramount and NBC Universal are all being sued by a writer who says Sheridan stole her idea for a TV show and used it to create Yellowstone.
In the suit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California on Friday, TV writer and entertainment journalist Lauren J. Salkin claims she submitted a pilot script, show bible and pitch deck for a show called Sovereign Nation to Sheridan’s reps at his management company, Elevate Entertainment, which is also named as a defendant in the suit, in late 2016 and early 2017.
Sovereign Nation, which Salkin spent more than 10 years developing, is described in the complaint, which was viewed by The Hollywood Reporter, as a “dramatic television series centered on tribal governance, casino-driven economic power and a modern war over land and development.”
Salkin alleges that she received a response from Elevate on Feb. 1, 2017 saying that Sheridan was “unavailable for TV projects.”
“Within months, Paramount greenlit Sheridan’s Yellowstone,” the complaint states.
The show premiered on the Paramount Network on June 20, 2018 and later began streaming on Peacock.
The suit says Yellowstone featured “specific expressive choices already embodied in Salkin’s materials” including “a tribal casino functioning as the institutional center of political and development power; a signature confrontation staged in the tribal chairman’s casino office over expansion beyond reservation boundaries; the use of trust land, the absence of zoning restrictions and a 99-year lease structure as the concrete mechanism for that expansion; and recurring master-plan imagery deployed to dramatize the struggle for territorial control.” Salkin also argues that Yellowstone followed several of her proposed casting recommendations for key roles in Sovereign Nation.
“Copyright law does not protect the abstract idea of a Western, a land dispute, an Indian casino or a powerful family — and that is not Plaintiff’s claim,” the complaint states. “The infringement alleged here lies in the copying of Salkin’s particular expressive choices and their coordinated selection and arrangement.”
The suit also notes that a senior HBO scripted TV executive who had reviewed materials for Sovereign Nation later told her he recognized similarities in Yellowstone.
Salkin argues that the hit Kevin Costner-led series, which has spawned numerous spinoffs, “has generated billions of dollars” for the defendants, of which she “has received nothing.”
Salkin is seeking damages and profits tied to alleged copyright infringement and injunctive relief preventing future infringement.
“This is a classic David-versus-Goliath situation,” Salkin’s attorney Paul B. Lackey told THR. “She spent years putting together the specific and multi-layered framework for a story that has become the biggest streaming success of all time. She has watched the vast commercial success of this story that was stolen from her and decided that enough was enough. We will do everything in our power to get her justice.”
Reps for Sheridan, Paramount, Elevate and NBCUniversal have not yet responded to THR‘s request for comment.