Zoe Saldaña and Nicole Kidman in Paramount+'s 'Lioness,' which bowed its third season on Aug. 2. Paramount+ For a few years there, Paramount+ had a lot of eggs in one basket. Following the rebrand of CBS All Access to Paramount+ in 2021, prolific Texas-based creator Taylor Sheridan has been at the forefront of the streamer’s strategy as he churned out show after show: 1923. Landman. Tulsa King. Lioness. Mayor of Kingstown — even as his mega-success Yellowstone was conspicuously absent from the streamer (the result of an exclusive licensing deal with Peacock).
Now, however, there’s new management at the platform, Sheridan will be out the door in a few years and Paramount+’s identity is being reworked. Nearly a year after Paramount Global merged with Skydance Media, the strategy under the streamer’s head of originals Jane Wiseman is taking shape. Though its new originals likely won’t start debuting on the service until the beginning of 2027, The Hollywood Reporter’s conversations with sources and execs’ own public statements show that Paramount+ is aiming to expand the appeal of the service beyond the existing Sheridan heads, even as it has clearly learned a thing or two from the king of operatic neo-Westerns.
Paramount+ reported more than 81 million subscribers in its latest earnings report, putting it behind Netflix, Disney+ and HBO Max (which could become its corporate sibling if David Ellison’s $111 billion Warner Bros. merger goes through) according to their most recent disclosures. To make it more competitive in the sharp-elbowed streaming wars, its executives are aiming to develop destination series that will broaden the streamer’s appeal, especially to more women and genre viewers.
“The green lights have to have that core evangelizing audience that’s hopefully slightly different than the core seen before [on Paramount+], but in success they’re supposed to capture multiple audiences,” says an executive familiar. A rep for Paramount Skydance declined to comment.
While the number of women out in the world wearing Yellowstone Dutton Ranch T-shirts will tell you that Sheridan shows have their share of female fans (and the studio cites that in a recent count, The Madison, Dutton Ranch and the first season of Marshals had slightly more female than male viewers), a cornerstone of the new strategy is appealing more broadly to women. “They’re building a female-forward wheel that is attempting to expand the brand’s reach beyond what it’s probably best known for, which is the Taylor Sheridan fare,” says one agent.
Direct-to-consumer chair Cindy Holland, who hired Wiseman, has made no secret of this ambition, telegraphing as much at Paramount’s 2026 upfront presentation. And the focus on female viewers has been on display in series pickups from Wiseman’s team like Discretion, a legal thriller produced by A24 and starring Nicole Kidman and Elle Fanning; Fear Not, a true-crime limited series from MGM Television starring Anne Hathaway; and the sequel to Clueless with Alicia Silverstone. On the unscripted side, Paramount+ recently gave the go-ahead to a dating show from the Love Is Blind production company Kinetic Content (working title: Making Love) and the youth baseball reality series Team Moms from executive producer Kim Kardashian.
Around town, the streamer has been calling for female-fronted adult dramas; romance and family stories; soap opera-type fare; and thrillers that are serialized, say sources. They’re interested in work with major creatives and stars (“They are cost-conscious, although they’re looking for big names to drive marketing,” says a production company exec). The streamer is also dipping its toes in YA stories à la Outer Banks, The Summer I Turned Pretty, Riverdale and its own series School Spirits but seemingly doesn’t want to spend a fortune on these projects (more like $3 million to $5 million an episode), says another agent source.
Like Peacock, the streamer is also testing out microdramas, the often soapy, bite-size vertical video format that typically overindexes on romance. The move follows BET — the Paramount Skydance-owned brand focused on the Black community whose series and films recently moved over to Paramount+ — partnering with aTwist to produce these vertical video series.
On the other end of things, the streamer is putting feelers out for “grounded genre” ideas — essentially big-concept genre (sci-fi, fantasy, supernatural) stories with relatable human drama. Wiseman’s hire, executive vp originals Chris Parnell, a former Apple TV creative exec who worked on Pluribus, is spearheading this push, where the streamer is said to be looking for projects along the line of, yes, Pluribus but also Silo, Severance, Fallout and Stranger Things.
These shows might appeal to the Star Trek crowd that is already on the platform, but they are also seen as a draw for international viewers who may not have traditionally been as compelled by Sheridan’s Westerns as the domestic audience. (Paramount’s recently inked exclusive deal with Stranger Things creators Matt and Ross Duffer will likely play a role here. The Duffers are set to produce work for Paramount direct-to-consumer, of which Paramount+ is a part, among other commitments.)
Other green lights from Wiseman’s team feel far more in line with the audience that already flocks to Paramount+. The logline for the upcoming Kenneth Branagh-starring drama Laird (a major landowner squaring off against a billionaire land grab) sounds like Yellowstone with a Scottish accent. 9/12, a prestige drama starring Jeremy Strong about the legal battle that 9/11 first responders engaged in after the disaster, could appeal to the Marshals crowd.
And what defines the platform isn’t just the type of stories it wants but also the ones it’s avoiding. Half-hour comedies aren’t on Paramount+’s wish list, sources say, given that CBS sitcoms like The Neighborhood and Georgie & Mandy’s First Marriage begin streaming on Paramount+ the day after they air on linear television.
Even with all of the streamer’s announcements, the volume of Paramount+ dealmaking has surprised some observers. When Holland’s hire was officially announced last year, hopes ballooned across the industry that she would be spearheading a major spending push akin to her time at Netflix during its spendthrift era. Those dreams haven’t panned out, say sources, who note the platform’s selectivity so far. Says the second agent, “The thing that popped out to us is the streamer is a very small team and they are not looking to replicate the ascension that Netflix had when Cindy was there in terms of volume. They’re taking very specific shots — and not a lot of them.”
The executive familiar pushes back on this observation, saying, “I can guarantee you the deal volume has been extraordinary.” The studio, meanwhile, cites that it has greenlit 25 new series over the past 10 months, not including renewals and pickups.
Paramount+ still has some time before Sheridan officially leaves the streamer that his shows helped to characterize; the creator’s TV deal will officially move to NBCUniversal in 2029. At that point, the streamer will retain the blockbuster series the creator made for it previously, even as any fresh Sheridan series will be written and produced exclusively for NBCUniversal platforms. 101 Studios, the studio that works with Sheridan on his series, has already moved its deal to NBCU.
That situation gives Paramount+ a generous offramp, a period of a few years when it can endeavor to retain the creator’s fans while also offering nonsubscribers compelling reasons to create an account. “They know that the whole service for the most part is buoyed on the back of Taylor Sheridan shows. It is obvious if that’s the case,” says the second agent. “The weird thing is he’s leaving, but he’s not leaving tomorrow.”
This story appeared in the Aug. 5 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.
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