The Taylor Sheridan Four Sixes Ranch acquisition, which carried a price tag the writer and producer described as leaving him roughly $300 million short, is the reason he signed an exclusivity deal with Paramount and kept working long after he had planned to stop, Sheridan revealed on a recent episode of the Rodeo Time podcast hosted by Dale Brisby.
“I was set up to retire. I was going to be done after ‘Yellowstone,'” Sheridan said on the episode, which aired on Tuesday. He said he had already paid cash for a ranch in Weatherford, Texas, and “didn’t owe anybody anything.” His plan, as he described it, was simple: “put my feet up and show horses, and have my little hobby herd over here, and that was it.”
How the Taylor Sheridan Four Sixes Ranch Deal Came About
The opportunity to buy the Four Sixes Ranch arose after its then-owner, Anne Marion, died. Sheridan said he had met Marion while filming “Yellowstone” on the property. The ranch was set to be divided and sold, but Marion had asked her estate to find someone who would “maintain her vision.” “And, so, the person they came up with was me,” Sheridan said.
Founded by Samuel “Burk” Burnett in 1870, the Four Sixes Ranch is known for its Angus cattle and Quarter horses, and it remained under the Burnett family for generations, eventually passing to Marion, Burnett’s great-granddaughter. Marion’s will required the family’s ranching operations to be sold after her death. The main ranch, spanning 142,372 acres in King County, was listed for $192.2 million, while two separate properties, the Dixon Creek and Frisco Creek ranch divisions, were listed for $137.3 million and $12.2 million respectively.
Texas Land Magazine reported in June 2022 that Sheridan put together a group of investors to buy the ranch, and that the deal closed in January that year, with all parties signing a confidentiality agreement preventing disclosure of the final sale price. “The deal was all-inclusive, three ranches and all inventory,” Sam Middleton, the listing agent and broker who represented Marion’s estate during the sale, told the magazine. Sheridan said the scripts he wrote while “Yellowstone” production was shut down during the pandemic helped him secure a controlling stake. “I wrote a bunch,” he said in an interview with The Land Report published in June 2022. “I sold enough scripts that I was able to become the majority owner in the partnership.”
The Paramount Deal That Followed
Faced with a purchase he described as leaving him “about $300 million short,” Sheridan said the ranch prompted him to reconsider signing an exclusive deal with Paramount, which he had previously resisted. “They were terrified that I was going to go to greener pastures and leave them and go somewhere else, which I probably was,” he said. Once the ranch opportunity materialised, he called Paramount with a change of heart. “I think I’m ready to make an overall deal,” he told them, and when they asked if he had a number in mind, he replied: “Why yes, I do.”
The scale of what followed that deal is considerable. Since signing with Paramount, Sheridan created “Mayor of Kingstown,” “1883,” “1923,” “Lioness,” “Landman,” “Tulsa King” and “The Madison,” according to Fox News. That output, spanning multiple concurrent series, represents a workload that sits at some distance from the quiet horse-showing retirement he had envisaged. Fox News also reported that Sheridan is 56.
The partnership with Paramount may not continue indefinitely. Puck reported in 2025 that Sheridan was set to leave Paramount for NBCUniversal once his current deal expires, a departure that would bring to a close the arrangement that the Taylor Sheridan Four Sixes Ranch purchase effectively forced him into in the first place.