Tulsa King Shows The Movie Genre Taylor Sheridan Needs To Do Next
Taylor Sheridan is best known for his television work, but the Tulsa King creator has also enjoyed a successful movie career and that specific TV series shows what he should possibly create next on the big screen. Tulsa King is a crime drama series starring Sylvester Stallone as a mafia capo from New York City who is sent to Oklahoma. Tulsa King follows the character's attempts to create a new criminal organization in Tulsa, Oklahoma, while facing dangers both in the state and from his own mafia bosses back home. While Taylor Sheridan is best known for his Westerns on television, his movie career has included crime thrillers, but Sheridan has never made an actual gangster movie.
Tulsa King Proves Taylor Sheridan Should Make An Old-Fashioned Gangster Movie
The Sylvester Stallone Series Is A Great Mafia Story
While Taylor Sheridan is best known for Yellowstone and its spinoffs on television, he also has several crime dramas, including Mayor of Kingstown and Tulsa King. On the big screen, Sheridan has also worked as a screenwriter and a director. Behind the camera, he has directed a horror movie, a neo-Western, and an action thriller.
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Every Movie Directed By Taylor Sheridan
Taylor Sheridan is known for being an acclaimed writer, but he also directed several episodes of TV and three different movies, and they're all great.
However, Sheridan has also written four other movies for other directors, including the crime thrillers Sicario and Sicario: Day of the Soldado, the Western Hell or High Water, and the action flick Without Remorse. However, even in the crime dramas, Sheridan has never written or directed anything like Tulsa King, a true gangster film. On television, Mayor of Kingstown has elements from gangster movies, but he really went all-in with Stallone's Tulsa King. With later projects like Lioness and Landman, Sheridan showed he was moving more into adding gangster elements to his Westerns and thrillers. It is finally time he made a genuine gangster movie for the big screen.
Taylor Sheridan has four television shows currently airing, and all are crime dramas/thrillers.
Taylor Sheridan's stories have similar grit to the mafia films of men like Martin Scorsese, and with his television success, he might be the man to move into the role Scorsese is leaving behind. Sheridan has his own Goodfellas or The Irishman in him, and with the group of actors he has been building, he has the talent to pull it off.
Taylor Sheridan's Crime Thrillers Haven't Been Proper Gangster Movies
Taylor Sheridan Has Made Crime Dramas But Not Gangster Movies
Original SR Image by Shawn Lealos.
Taylor Sheridan has several film under his belt, both as a writer and a director. He even has more crime thrillers than he does Westerns. Even Sheridan's Westerns are more neo-Westerns with crime drama elements, showing that it is more of his area of interest than even the main genre he is best-known for.
Taylor Sheridan Movie Career
Movie
Role
Genre
Vile (2011)
Director
Horror
Sicario (2015)
Writer
Crime Thriller
Hell of High Water (2016)
Writer
Western
WInd River (2017)
Writer/Director
Western
Sicario: Day of the Soldado (2018)
Writer
Crime Thriller
Without Remorse (2021)
Writer
Action Thriller
Those Who Wish Me Dead (2021)
Writer/Director
Action Thriller
Finestkind (2023)
Producer
Crime Thriller
While he has mafia members in his most popular movies, Sicario is more about the law enforcement agents and governments bringing them down than it is about the mafia families that are the focus of shows like Tulsa King. With that in mind, Sheridan has built a foundation that should easily lead to a gangster movie in his career.
Yellowstone Is As Much Of A Gangster Story As It Is A Western
The Television Series Is Full Of Mafia-Styled Deceptions
While Taylor Sheridan has only really gone full gangster in Tulsa King, he proved with Yellowstone that he could use elements of the genre in all of his stories. Yellowstone is his most popular work and its setting is a Western, but the characters share gangster traits with any mafia family, albeit with political intrigue added in.
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How Taylor Sheridan Perfected The TV Shared Universe With Yellowstone
Shared TV universes are not easy to pull off, but Taylor Sheridan perfected the concept with Yellowstone, 1883, and 1923: here's how he did it.
Yellowstone is basically the story of what would happen if a mafia family were set up in the mountains of Montana rather than a big city like Chicago or New York. The Dutton family runs things from the Yellowstone Dutton Ranch, and they deal with obstacles from both the local law enforcement agencies and the neighboring Broken Rock Indian Reservation. Kevin Costner stars as John Dutton III, a fifth-generation patriarch of the Dutton family and the man who owns the Yellowstone Dutton Ranch. He is basically the "don" of the Dutton family and eventually became the Governor of Montana. However, he also has kids who all want a piece of the action, and death and destruction follows.
Yellowstone Universe
Series
Seasons
Dates
Yellowstone
5
2018-2024
1883
1
2021-2022
1923
2
2022-2025
The Madison
TBD
2025-
In the end, the television show shares more in common with a gangster story than a Western, as betrayals, murders, and ultimately, the downfall of the family play out throughout the show's five seasons. If anything, it proves that Taylor Sheridan's best work deals with gangster themes, and it is time he makes a full-on gangster movie.
Tulsa King
8/10
Release Date
November 13, 2022
Network
Paramount+
Showrunner
Terence Winter
Directors
Allen Coulter, Benjamin Semanoff, David Semel, Guy Ferland, Joshua Marston, Kevin Dowling, Lodge Kerrigan, Jim McKay
Writers
Joseph Riccobene, David Flebotte, William Schmidt, Taylor Elmore, Tom Sierchio, Regina Corrado, Stephen Scaia
