YELLOWSTONE Creator Taylor Sheridan to Write and Direct EMPIRE OF THE SUMMER MOON

Yellowstone creator Taylor Sheridan and his Bosque Ranch outfit have optioned the book Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in American History. The book was written by S.C. Gwynne, and Sheridan will write and direct the film.

This has been a passion project for Sheridan for years, and at one point the film was set up at Warner Bros. This is going to make for an incredible film, especially with Sheridan developing it. This should end up being a sweeping epic.

The book is described as “an exhaustive historical account of the four-decade struggle between the Comanche tribe and white settlers to control the American West. Quanah was considered its greatest chief.”

Comanches were legendary warriors, and part of the story is said to involve Quanah’s mother, Cynthia Ann Parker, who was nine when she was kidnapped by the Comanches and was a model for the young kidnapped girl in The Searchers. In the real story, Parker was married with a child when the rescue attempt was made, and she didn’t want to leave because she had no memory of life before she was taken.”

The author of the book said in a statement: “I can’t think of anyone better qualified to bring Empire of the Summer Moon to the screen than Taylor Sheridan. He has a deep and nuanced understanding of both the myth and reality of the Old West. I am thrilled that he is undertaking this project.”

The full description of the book reads:

In the tradition of Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, a stunningly vivid historical account of the forty-year battle between Comanche Indians and white settlers for control of the American West, centering on Quanah, the greatest Comanche chief of them all.

S. C. Gwynne’s Empire of the Summer Moonspans two astonishing stories. The first traces the rise and fall of the Comanches, the most powerful Indian tribe in American history. The second entails one of the most remarkable narratives ever to come out of the Old West: the epic saga of the pioneer woman Cynthia Ann Parker and her mixed-blood son Quanah, who became the last and greatest chief of the Comanches.

Although readers may be more familiar with the tribal names Apache and Sioux, it was in fact the legendary fighting ability of the Comanches that determined just how and when the American West opened up. Comanche boys became adept bareback riders by age six; full Comanche braves were considered the best horsemen who ever rode. They were so masterful at war and so skillful with their arrows and lances that they stopped the northern drive of colonial Spain from Mexico and halted the French expansion westward from Louisiana. White settlers arriving in Texas from the eastern United States were surprised to find the frontier being rolled backward by Comanches incensed by the invasion of their tribal lands. So effective were the Comanches that they forced the creation of the Texas Rangers and account for the advent of the new weapon specifically designed to fight them: the six-gun.

The war with the Comanches lasted four decades, in effect holding up the development of the new American nation. Gwynne’s exhilarating account delivers a sweeping narrative that encompasses Spanish colonialism, the Civil War, the destruction of the buffalo herds, and the arrival of the railroads—a historical feast for anyone interested in how the United States came into being.

Against this backdrop Gwynne presents the compelling drama of Cynthia Ann Parker, a lovely nine-year-old girl with cornflower-blue eyes who was kidnapped by Comanches from the far Texas frontier in 1836. She grew to love her captors and became infamous as the "White Squaw" who refused to return until her tragic capture by Texas Rangers in 1860. More famous still was her son Quanah, a warrior who was never defeated and whose guerrilla wars in the Texas Panhandle made him a legend.

Sheridan has a bunch of shows that he’s currently working on and he also spends much time at the Four Sixes, running the sprawling ranch as he crafts the final episodes of Yellowstone and 1923 as well as all the other series he’s into.

The Texas ranch that Sheridan owns actually had relics found on it, one of which included Quanah’s lance. The ranch was initially established in 1870 by Burk Burnett, and his friend Quanah told him exactly where to build. It’s said that the chief went out and killed a deer, and the antlers are part of the massive stone fireplace in the main living room.