How ‘Yellowstone’ has gone from being a show no one wants to be a great TV phenomenon in recent years

Yellowstone is everything to this day TV empire. Season 4 broke audience records, just a few weeks before its prequel “1883” was released and another spin-off titled “6666” was confirmed. In addition, it is not possible to get rid of more strings within this The universe created by Taylor Sheridan, which was about to take shape.

A project doomed to fail?

The truth is that the Yellowstone project was born into it HBO with the idea that Robert Redford He was the protagonist, but it came to nothing. was then became The Weinstein Company Gave it a try and noticed Kevin Costner to lead the future and they made him an offer he couldn’t refuse of $500,000 per episode – a number that would later grow into one of the highest-paid actors ever on television.

They were serious, but the problem was that no one cared. Then it was, it turns out demonAnd Netflix, FX o TNT They could have stayed with the series, but they all passed. His high budget of $80 million worked against him and everything indicated that the project would achieve nothing.

That’s when Viacom came to the rescue, as the details were finalized SpikeTV Make the transition to be called Paramount Network, a movement announce At the end of September 2017. Yellowstone caught their attention enough to overlook the unhelpful attitude of Sheridan, who began work on the series in 2013 after seeing that his acting career hadn’t quite taken off, and both due to the time it was time to better explain the idea to them in person that he He will not take into account any remark conveyed to him by the study on the series. In fact, “Yellowstone” was the first series on the Paramount Network.

Slow but safe boot

However, a happy ending would be long into the future, as the Harvey Weinstein scandal resulted in the Weinstein Company being unable to meet agreed payments. Luckily, Paramount took overI’m looking for a new ally, as the same CEO of The Weinstein who picked Yellowstone at the time was already working, wiping every Harvey Weinstein presence from the series. They didn’t want anything that could taint their first show.

Yellowstone was released in the United States on June 20, 2018. Season 1 You did well in the crowd – 2.24 million viewers per episode – But without being anything particularly striking. No streaming platform has shown enough interest in it, so it stayed out of this way for a while.

There is no limit to your success

In 2019, Peacock showed an interest in acquiring the broadcasting rights, a deal that won’t end until January 2020. Meanwhile, Season two premiered in summer 2019, improving audience data for season one – Here the average viewership increased to 2.36 million viewers per episode.

The agreement with Peacock closed in January 2020, but the first two seasons of the series were not available to stream until July of the same year. By that time, the third season of “Yellowstone” had been released and interest in it had increased significantly again. – The first episode of that season was the most watched in the series until then, as the number of its viewers did not exceed 3 million viewers, and this episode in particular exceeded the 4 million viewer mark, achieving an average follow-up to 3, 91 million viewers per episode.

but nevertheless, Her access to the Flow was crucial to her growth to the sky. The third season became available in November 2020, in part due to the audience records you set with the fourth season, the data actually doubled compared to the previous season, adding 7.83 million viewers per episode. Of course, Paramount had already seen before that it had a gold mine in possession, and in February 2021 announced a pre-‘1881 investigation. The Yellowstone Empire was born.

Which is that all about her growth in audience is little less than a miracle in a world where no series actually achieves something like this. It’s already been so rare years ago that only great phenomena like The Walking Dead or Game of Thrones were gaining an audience year after year – peaking for the first time in season five, while the second never stopped growing – and now it’s almost impossible. He almost owed Yellowstone., while you’re still curious because it had to be shown on the global streaming platform and not on Paramount+…