Terence Winter departed Tulsa King after creative tensions with creator Taylor Sheridan, but he’s now been rehired for season 2.
Tulsa King was a big hit for Paramount+, and they quickly renewed the series for season 2, but it was reported last year that showrunner Terence Winter would be stepping down due to creative differences with creator Taylor Sheridan. However, it looks like Winter will be returning for the second season after all.
Terence Winter won’t be reprising his role of showrunner for Tulsa King season 2 but will focus primarily on writing for the show as well as working closely with Sylvester Stallone. “He loves these characters and loved working with Sly and was glad his post-strike schedule allowed him to return to write but not run the show,” one source told THR. This new role will also limit his contact with Taylor Sheridan. The production will be bringing in an as-yet-unnamed-executive producer and director to assist on the production side, but won’t have a traditional showrunner.
Sheridan has famously butted heads with other showrunners, who he claimed haven’t been motivated by his directives. “My stories have a very simple plot that is driven by the characters as opposed to characters driven by a plot — the antithesis of the way television is normally modeled,” Sheridan told THR last year. “I’m really interested in the dirty of the relationships in literally every scene. But when you hire a room that may not be motivated by those same qualities — and a writer always wants to take ownership of something they’re writing — and I give this directive and they’re not feeling it, then they’re going to come up with their own qualities. So for me, writers rooms, they haven’t worked.“
Tulsa King “follows New York mafia capo Dwight ‘The General’ Manfredi (Stallone), just after he is released from prison after 25 years and unceremoniously exiled by his boss to set up shop in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Realizing that his mob family may not have his best interests in mind, Dwight slowly builds a crew from a group of unlikely characters to help him establish a new criminal empire in a place that to him might as well be another planet.” The second season is expected to debut on Paramount+ this fall.
