A screenwriter has filed a federal copyright infringement lawsuit accusing Taylor Sheridan, Paramount and NBCUniversal of stealing the concept behind Yellowstone from a pilot she pitched years before the show ever aired. Lauren J. Salkin, a Virginia-based entertainment journalist and TV writer, says she spent more than a decade developing a series called Sovereign Nation before submitting pilot scripts, show bibles and pitch decks to Sheridan's management company in late 2016 and early 2017.
The lawsuit, filed Friday in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, was first reported by TMZ, according to TheWrap. Salkin claims that Sheridan's company, Elevate Entertainment, formally notified her on February 1, 2017, that Sheridan had reviewed her materials but was unavailable for television projects, a note that arrived just months before Paramount greenlit Yellowstone, according to Soap Central. Yellowstone went on to premiere on the Paramount Network in June 2018, run for five seasons, and spin off 1883, 1923, Marshals and Dutton Ranch, per TheWrap.
A Casino, a Land War and Two Familiar Faces
Central to Salkin's complaint is what she describes as a near-total overlap in premise: Sovereign Nation, like Yellowstone, centered on a war over land and development, with a tribal casino functioning as the institutional center of political power. TheWrap reports that Yellowstone depicts trust land, the absence of zoning restrictions and a 99-year lease as mechanisms for expansion, along with a confrontation in the tribal chairman's casino office over expansion beyond reservation boundaries — plot elements Salkin says mirror her own pitch materials, which included master-plan imagery depicting a struggle for territorial control.
Perhaps the most specific claim in the filing involves casting. According to the lawsuit as detailed by Headliner.nl, Salkin's 2016 pitch deck named actor Gil Birmingham for a tribal leader role operating through a casino and Danny Huston for an outside developer role — two actors who were later cast in nearly identical roles on Yellowstone. TheWrap confirms both Huston and Birmingham were cast in the series, alongside a lead ensemble that included Kevin Costner, Luke Grimes, Kelly Reilly, Wes Bentley and Cole Hauser.
An HBO Executive's Alleged Observation
Salkin's complaint also leans on secondhand industry testimony. She says she met with a senior HBO scripted-television executive about Sovereign Nation, and that this executive later told her he recognized clear structural and thematic similarities between her materials and Yellowstone, per Headliner.nl. TheWrap's reporting adds a further wrinkle: that same executive is said to have rejected Sheridan's Yellowstone pitch in spring 2017 due to its similarities to Salkin's work — though it remains unclear from the available reporting whether Elevate Entertainment ever actually shared Salkin's materials with Sheridan before issuing its February 2017 rejection note.
Salkin, whose prior career included work as an entertainment journalist and distributor for Newsweek, the Associated Press, Dick Clark Productions and National Geographic — where she co-instructed a 2006 photography program for Afghan women in Kabul, per Soap Central — argues that Yellowstone captures the total concept and feel of Sovereign Nation. Her suit names several co-defendants beyond Sheridan, Paramount and NBCUniversal, including John Linson, Art Linson, Bosque Ranch Productions, Linson Entertainment and 101 Studios, according to TheWrap.
What Salkin Is Asking a Jury to Decide
The lawsuit seeks a jury trial, an injunction preventing continued and future infringement, and unspecified damages including an accounting and disgorgement of profits from a franchise Salkin's filing asserts has generated billions of dollars across five seasons and multiple spinoffs, according to Headliner.nl. Representatives for Sheridan, Paramount and NBCUniversal did not respond to TheWrap's requests for comment.
This is not Sheridan's first brush with intellectual property litigation. In November 2023, his company Bosque Ranch filed a trademark infringement suit against Yellowstone star Cole Hauser's coffee brand, Free Rein, over logo similarities, according to the Los Angeles Times. Sheridan has since built out a broader television empire beyond Yellowstone, creating Mayor of Kingstown, Tulsa King, Lioness, Landman and The Madison, and he is set to leave Paramount for a deal at NBCUniversal beginning January 1, 2029, per TheWrap.
The Legal Hurdle Ahead
Because the case was filed in the Ninth Circuit, Salkin faces a specific and demanding legal standard. Copyright plaintiffs there must prove both access to the original work and substantial similarity, using an objective extrinsic test that compares specific creative elements alongside a subjective intrinsic test evaluated by lay observers, according to a review published by the Marquette Law Scholarly Commons. Generic story ideas, themes and standard genre tropes — legally termed scènes à faire — are excluded from copyright protection under federal doctrine, meaning broad Western themes or casino politics alone cannot be copyrighted, according to the University of Miami School of Law. That distinction is likely to sit at the heart of any defense, since Sheridan's team could argue the overlapping elements Salkin points to amount to unprotectable genre conventions rather than original expression lifted from her materials.
