Amazon is joining the current western craze spawned by the massive success of Yellowstone with an original series created by True Detective’s Nic Pizzolatto.
While the streamer has yet to comment on the matter, Variety confirmed the project this week. According to sources, the series will “revolve around a former outlaw who must reckon with a threat from his past in order to keep the life and family he has worked so hard to build.”
Pizzolatto is the mind behind HBOs Emmy winning True Detective anthology, which premiered in 2014 with Woody Harrelson and Matthew McConaughey in the leads. The show will soon head into its fourth season with Jodie Foster and Kali Reis taking charge. Pizzolatto is still involved with the series as an executive producer.
The news comes after Pizzolatto’s failed attempt to bring another seemingly modern western series based on Patrick Coleman’s novel, The Churchgoer, to the screen via FX and Touchstone Television. The series, renamed Redeemer, was set to star McConaughey. But in January 2021, the project hit a snag when McConaughey walked. Without his lead, Pizzolatto ditched the series altogether.
If this current series comes to fruition, it will not be the creator’s first crack at a western. Pizzolatto also wrote the screenplay for the highly acclaimed 2016 hit, The Magnificent 7.
Amazon Has Another ‘Yellowstone’-Esque Series Streaming Now
Amazon’s upcoming western series follows several similar projects, all of which hope to gain the same traction as Paramount’s Yellowstone.
Taylor Sheridan’s Kevin Costner-led series has been one of the network’s most successful ever, with each season doing better than the last. The current season 5 even racked in 12.1 million live-plus-same-day viewers, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Not only was that the biggest debut for the show to date, but it also made it the no. 1 scripted series premiere of the year.
Sheridan has since built an entire franchise based around Yellowstone’s Dutton family with two prequels, 1883 and 1923, and two more prequels,1944 and 6666, on the way.
Pizzolatto’s series will not be the first of Amazon’s attempts to jump on the western bandwagon. The streamer dropped Outer Range starring Josh Brolin in 2022. The story shows Brolin’s Royal Abbott as a modern-day Wyoming rancher discovers an “unfathomable mystery” on his land, according to the official synopsis.
Outer Range is returning with a second season this year.
