Taylor Sheridan isn’t content to create, write, and helm a mere handful of shows for Paramount. Several more are incoming, including the apparently revamped series that was meant to star Matthew McConaughey. Also, Yellowstone will conclude its rodeo this fall (without Kevin Costner), and Tulsa King will return for a second season led by Sly Stallone and featuring Frank Grillo, who I cannot believe is only now entering the Sheridan universe.
Then there would be Landman, a Texas-set story about those oil-industry roughnecks and businessmen who maneuver around them. This series will premiere relatively soon (compared to, say, 6666) with filming taking place this past spring and post-production currently ongoing. Let’s talk about what we can expect, starting with a gathering of star power.
Cast
Sheridan might have assembled his most impressive gathering of stars yet for this series. Landman shall be led by Billy Bob Thornton, who also appeared in 1883, so perhaps he will one day be considered Sheridan’s muse. I’m only half-joking on that front, but we will see how this show is received and whether it receives future seasons. Thornton, of course, has portrayed both straightforward and more morally complex, nuanced characters, but here, he is a unique beast: Tommy Norris, a wheeling and dealing oil company crisis manager.
We will also see Tommy’s private life, which includes an ex-wife (Ali Larter, and you can catch a glimpse of them together over at Vanity Fair). They share two twenty-something children (Michelle Randolph and Jacob Lofland), one of whom will be getting grubby in the oil fields. Meanwhile, Jon Hamm will portray oil-industry titan Monty Miller (an apparently friendly associate to Tommy), who is married to Cami, portrayed by Demi Moore. The cast further includes Michael Peña as Armando Medina, “a veteran roughneck.”
Additionally, Andy Garcia, Paulina Chávez, Kayla Wallace, Mark Collie, and James Jordan are onboard, and the series, which filmed in Texas including the Fort Worth area, pulled extras from the local community to portray TCU college athletes and experienced oil-field workers.
Plot
Interestingly enough, this show takes place a world apart from the gangster-focused Tulsa King, which is set in the former “oil capital of the world,” and heads down to Texas, where Sheridan owns numerous properties. As always with his series, he will zero in on a facet of the American experience, and as Jon Hamm has revealed, Landman stands apart from other Sheridan shows to focus upon “oil speculators and what they called landmen, which are the guys that run around and try to acquire mineral rights and land rights in the hope of speculating and finding oil.”
The show will take a behind-the-curtain glimpse not only of the billionaires leading the industry but also the unforgiving terrain of the oil fields. As Thornton recently told Vanity Fair, those scrubland scenes were “probably the hardest thing I ever did.” The Bad Santa and Sling Blade star revealed how the brutal heat led him and the crew to nearly pass out:
“It was so hot some days, and we’re shooting out at these oil pumpjacks. Do you know what caliche is?’ That’s the cement-like powdery soil that blankets the landscape. ‘We’re on these caliche roads with the rocks in ’em and stuff, and I’m wearing cowboy boots, and there are scenes where I have to run to the truck. It’s a hundred degrees with a hundred percent humidity. Jesus Christ … This just sucks.”
Demi Moore, however, seems to have had a more pleasant experience, and she discussed how the show highlights the women who also pull strings in the oil industry: “He writes incredible, complex, dynamic and delicious women who are powerful, vulnerable, flawed,” Moore says. Look for Moore’s Cami to be as much of a force as her Hamm-portrayed husband, Monty Miller.
From the show’s synopsis (with a reference to the storied Boomtown podcast):
“Set in the proverbial boomtowns of West Texas, Landman is a modern-day tale of fortune seeking in the world of oil rigs. Based on the notable 11-part podcast Boomtown, the series is an upstairs/downstairs story of roughnecks and wildcat billionaires fueling a boom so big, it’s reshaping our climate, our economy and our geopolitics.”
Release Date
Landman will debut on November 17 on Paramount+.
Trailer
No teaser trailer exists yet, surprisingly enough, although that should happen any day now. In the meantime, here’s Sheridan talking (at the 2:20 mark below) about writing the show specifically for Billy Bob.
