As surely because the rugged Duttons will proceed to cling to their patch of Montana paradise within the mega-hit Yellowstone, so will creator Taylor Sheridan’s cowboy cinematic universe expand outward and upward. Only the most recent example of this phenomenon is the season 2 renewal of 1923, the Yellowstone prequel set in—you guessed it!—1923, with Harrison Ford and Helen Mirren because the resident Dutton patriarch and matriarch. To this point, the Paramount+ spin-off has been a wild success story for the brand; the December 2022 premiere was the streamer’s biggest premiere within the U.S., ever.
On condition that 1923 has yet to air greater than a handful of episodes of its first season, there’s not much anyone knows yet in regards to the way forward for the Roaring Twenties-set series because it rolls ever closer to the brink of the Great Depression. (We aren’t even quite sure which of those 1923 characters is granddaddy to Kevin Costner’s John Dutton III. Is it sweet, innocent Jack Dutton? Or the strapping safari hunter Spencer Dutton?) Either way, expect many more supposed “one-hour movies,” if Indiana Jones is to be believed.
In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Ford said of joining the Yellowstone prequel, “I had met with Taylor, who gave me a really temporary outline of what he had in mind, and I went on faith and my experience with Yellowstone, 1883. He’s produced a piece of incredible ambition, scale, scope [and] cinematic ambition. Taylor thinks of every of those episodes as a one-hour movie. And that’s the product that we’re getting.”
This story can be updated.
Culture Author
Lauren Puckett-Pope is a staff culture author at ELLE, where she primarily covers film, television and books. She was previously an associate editor at ELLE.Â
