In his wildest dreams, writer Christian Wallace never thought he’d be co-creating a television series with Taylor Sheridan. However, his successful podcast Boomtown—which describes the historic oil boom in the Permian Basin—caught the prolific creator’s attention, thus planting the seeds for Paramount+’s Landman. With the obvious parallels between the growth of the oil industry and the burgeoning businesses of the modern American West as depicted in Yellowstone, Sheridan “was the only person who I had in mind to adapt Boomtown,” says Wallace. “I had wanted to work with him for years.”
The drama centers around Billy Bob Thornton‘s Tommy Norris, a grizzled veteran of the oil fields and a certified landman. His job is to obtain mineral rights for Motex Oil’s owner Monty Miller (Jon Hamm) and to keep his operation running smoothly. If that means negotiating with the cartels or going toe-to-toe with corporate lawyers or dealing with issues on …