YELLOWSTONE creator Taylor Sheridan will write and direct EMPIRE OF THE SUMMER MOON

Yellowstone Creator Taylor Sheridan and his Bosque Ranch team optioned the book Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanche, the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in American History. The book was written by SC 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. It’s going to be an incredible film, especially with Sheridan developing it. This should end up being a sweeping epic.

The book is described as “a comprehensive historical account of the forty-year struggle between the Comanche tribe and white settlers for control of the American West. Quanah was considered its greatest leader.”

The Comanche were legendary warriors and part of the story is said to involve Quanah’s mother, Cynthia Ann Parker, who was 9 years old when she was kidnapped by the Comanche and was a model for the kidnapped young girl in The Searchers. In the true 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 her life before she was kidnapped.

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

The full description of the book reads:

In the tradition of Bury my heart at Wounded Kneea remarkably 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.

SC Gwynne’s Empire of Summer Moons spans two astonishing stories. The first traces the rise and fall of the Comanche, the most powerful Indian tribe in American history. The second concerns one of the most extraordinary narratives ever to come out of the Old West: the epic saga of pioneer Cynthia Ann Parker and her half-breed son Quanah, who became the last and greatest chief of the Comanche.

While readers may be more familiar with the Apache and Sioux tribal names, it was in fact the legendary fighting prowess of the Comanche that determined how and when the American West opened up. Comanche boys became skilled bareback riders by age six; the truly brave Comanches were considered the best horsemen who had ever ridden. They were so skilled at war and so skilled with their arrows and spears that they stopped colonial Spain’s northern push from Mexico and stopped French expansion westward from Louisiana. White settlers arriving in Texas from the eastern United States were surprised to find the frontier being pushed back by Comanches enraged by the invasion of their tribal lands. The Comanche were so effective that they forced the creation of the Texas Rangers and explains the advent of the new weapon specifically designed to fight them: the six guns.

The war with the Comanche lasted four decades, effectively hindering the development of the new American nation. Gwynne’s hilarious account offers a sweeping narrative that spans 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 to be.

In this context Gwynne presents the gripping drama of Cynthia Ann Parker, an adorable nine-year-old girl with cornflower blue eyes who was kidnapped by Comanches from the distant Texas frontier in 1836. She grew to love her captors and became known as the “White Squaw” who refused to return until his tragic capture by Texas Rangers in 1860. More famous still was his son Quanah, a warrior who was never defeated and whose guerrilla warfare in the Texas Panhandle made him a legend.

Sheridan has a ton of shows he’s currently working on and also spends a lot of time at Four Sixes, running the sprawling ranch while making the final episodes of Yellowstone and 1923 as well as any other series he’s interested in.

Relics were found on the founder of the Texas ranch owned by Sheridan, one of which included Quanah’s spear. The ranch was initially established in 1870 by Burk Burnett and his friend Quanah told him exactly where to build. It is said that the chief went out and killed a deer, and the antlers are part of the huge stone fireplace in the main living room.