Last year I told you the creator of your dad’s favorite TV show was writing the Call of Duty movie. I was speaking of Taylor Sheridan, naturally, creator of Yellowstone and its many spinoff series, who is writing the CoD movie that Peter Berg will direct and that Mark Wahlberg will almost certainly star in (they’ve already made five movies together).
Today, more tidings from that same neck of the woods: your dad’s favorite show, which as we’ve just established is Yellowstone, might become a game.
This comes to us via Polygon, who spoke to Shawn Kittelsen, the head of creative and production at the newly formed Paramount Games Studio. The studio’s first game has been announced: it’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Last Ronin. But the future may include not just pizza-loving reptiles but cattle-ranching cowboys.
“All of the Yellowstone and Yellowstone-adjacent titles, Landman, Tulsa King, these are all priorities for us,” Kittelsen said.
There are no details yet as to what kind of game or games the “Sheridanverse”—a term I don’t plan on ever using again—will grow to encompass, but Kittelsen explained that the studio wanted to find the right partner to explore the possibilities with.
“We are cultural stewards, and these stories, characters, and worlds mean something to the fans who invest so much of their time and money in them. We need to honor that relationship, or we will lose them,” Kittelsen said. “If we start like, willy-nilly licensing everything that we can and just to check boxes and fill the coffers, people will get wise to it, and we won’t actually see the success that we could.”
At the same time, Kittelsen said the new studio is also interested in other Paramount properties like Star Trek, Avatar: The Last Airbender, Lioness, Spongebob Squarepants, the previously mentioned Tulsa King and Landman… pretty much every show on Paramount could be fodder for a game, sounds like. So, if you and your dad were itching to play some co-op game based on Yellowstone, or 1883, or 1923, or 6666, or Marshals, or Dutton Ranch, or the rumored 1944, you might be in for a wait.
