‘Yellowstone’ spinoff series starring Kelly Reilly and Cole Hauser

EXCLUSIVE: The upcoming season 5 finale of Yellowstone will not be the end of the Dutton clan’s history. Series standouts Kelly Reilly and Cole Hauser have closed deals to lead a spinoff series, reprising their roles as Beth Dutton and Rip Wheeler, respectively, sources tell Deadline.

Taylor Sheridan, the mastermind behind it Yellowstone and its ever-expanding universe, is working on the creative for the new show, which will likely feature other cast members from the mothership series alongside Reilly and Hauser, I hear. Listed by Yellowstone characters played by the same actors in the same current time frame, the new spinoff shares the most DNA with the mother ship of any show in the Yellowstone universe to date, which explains why it will be the first spinoff to carry Yellowstone in the title, sources said.

Ahead of Sunday’s Season 5 finale of Yellowstonehad been growing confusion over what now happens to the characters of the hugely popular drama series, who are still alive at the end of the upcoming episode.

As Deadline reported in August, Yellowstone producers MTV Entertainment Studios and 101 Studios had been negotiating with Reilly and Hauser for several months. The two had initially had their eye on a spinoff. It emerged during the summer that the duo can continue as leads of Yellowstone Season 6 as the series continues after the death of its original central character, Kevin Costner’s John Dutton.

That scenario was supported by the fact that Paramount Network, which had originally announced Season 5B as Yellowstone‘s final installment, quietly dropped that message when the subseason teaser was released in June, instead touting the new episodes as the saga’s “epic return.” Similarly, the promo for the upcoming closer calls it a season finale, not a series finale.

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While the intention is to continue the story in Yellowstone and a source indicated that doing another season wasn’t completely out of the question, the focus ultimately returned to doing it in a new series, I hear. That would allow Paramount Network parent Paramount Global to keep the show within the company’s ecosystem, unlike the parent series, which has a pre-existing exclusive streaming deal with NBCUniversal’s Peacock.

Yellowstone revolves around the Dutton family, who control the largest contiguous cattle ranch in the United States. Reilly’s Beth is the daughter of John Dutton (Costner), a former head of acquisitions at the Schwartz & Meyer financial firm. Hauser’s jaded ranch foreman Rip Wheeler, who first came to John Dutton as a young boy on the run after killing his stepfather to protect his mother, learned to be a cowboy from John, who treated him like a son.

Season 5B started with Dutton’s death and has depicted its aftermath, with two other characters – Denim Richards’ Colby and Dawn Olivieri’s Sarah – subsequently killed. The ranch’s fate hangs in the balance as the new governor moves forward with plans to subdivide the Yellowstone property and develop it – exactly what John Dutton didn’t want. Sunday’s penultimate episode hinted that John’s son Kayce (Luke Grimes) may be hatching a plan to save the estate for future generations, prompting Beth (Reilly) to exclaim, “why didn’t I think of that?”

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To provide a validation that Yellowstone remains a big audience draw without Costner, the new installment has been a ratings flurry, with episode 4, which featured Colby’s death, drawing a season high of 12.1 million viewers, according to the Paramount Network.

Ahead of the Season 5 finale, Hauser posted a photo from the final taping, sparking fan speculation as to who might be left standing at the end of the episode.

Yellowstone was co-created by Sheridan and John Linson, who is producing with Art Linson, Costner, David C. Glasser, Bob Yari, Stephen Kay, Michael Friedman, Christina Voros and Keith Cox. The series is distributed by Paramount Global Content Distribution.

The Yellowstone franchise’s first contemporary spinoff, Madison, starring Michelle Pfeiffer, is slated to follow Season 5B of the parent series. Its prequel series includes 1883 and 1923.

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