Taylor Sheridan’s TV release schedule is chock full of variety. Lioness, which releases a second season this month, couldn’t be further removed both Tulsa King (also recently dropping a second season in September) and Yellowstone, which will possibly finish its run later this year before the return of 1923. Then there’s Landman, which will debut in November while also departing from the Dutton ranch for the sprawling oil fields of Texas.
As always, Sheridan created and wrote the series to carve out another look at a lifestyle that is quintessentially American. Sure, there will be boots and cowboy hats galore, but the focus will be on oil-field roughnecks, the wheelers and dealers who organize that trade, and the tycoons who profit handsomely from it. Additionally, Sheridan continues to amass A-listers who are clamoring for roles in his Paramount Network (and Paramount+) empire, so let’s get down to business on what to expect from Landman.
Cast
1883 cast member Billy Bob Thornton leads this series after Sheridan created the Tommy Norris role specifically for the Sling Blade, Fargo, Bad Santa star. Norris is an oil company crisis manager who can alternately be found in the fields and in lush drawing rooms. His chief ally, oil-industry king Monty Miller, will be portrayed by Jon Hamm with his wife, Cami, picked up by Demi Moore.
Tommy’s strenuous life doesn’t end after hard days on the job. His private life will receive plenty of air time with his ex-wife, Angela, portrayed by Ali Larter and their young adult children represented by Michelle Randolph and Jacob Lofland (who does his time amid dangerous conditions in the fields, too).
Meanwhile, Michael Peña will be on hand as “veteran roughneck” Armando Medina with Andy Garcia and Paulina Chávez rounding out the main cast.
Plot
A recently released trailer (with the top-scoring YouTube comment being “There Will Be Billy Bob”) revealed that the series will be more (literally) explosive than perhaps imagined. And sure, that comment alludes to Daniel Day-Lewis’ protagonist, Daniel Plainview, in Paul Thomas Anderson’s There Will Be Blood, a film that not only fell into the Western and thriller umbrellas but could arguably qualify as a horror movie in its own right. Not that I’m suggesting the movie influenced Taylor Sheridan in making Landman, or at least, he hasn’t declared as much, but perhaps when Sheridan’s audience has watched the full first season, we’ll see some legit comparisons being made.
Landman‘s story will be a more contemporary saga that is based upon the popular Boomtown podcast, and the show’s description promises a drama “set in the proverbial boomtowns of West Texas and described as a modern-day tale of fortune seeking in the world of oil rigs.” We can also expect “an upstairs/downstairs story of roughnecks and wildcat billionaires fueling a boom so big, it’s reshaping our climate, our economy and our geopolitics.”
Jon Hamm has promised that this is not a story about cowboys but more of an interpersonal drama. However, the trailer emphasizes risks that roughnecks and landmen (described by Hamm as “the guys that run around and try to acquire mineral rights and land rights”) face on a daily basis while speculating and then guarding the land. Those include balls of fire that, as we see, will land multiple characters in need of medical care, surely with inner scars to follow.
Billy Bob admitted that the production was anything but easy, telling Vanity Fair that he had to run in 100 degree weather in high humidity while wearing cowboy boots on “caliche roads.” On the more glamorous side of the business will be Demi Moore, who explained 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.”
Release Date
Weekly drops will begin on November 17 while Lioness continues as well on Paramount+.
Trailer
“Welcome to the oil business” kicks off an explosive few minutes.
