Ex-'Tulsa King' Showrunner Terence Winter Rejoins As Writer

 

The mob has welcomed back its former leader. Terence Winter, who stepped away as Tulsa King’s co-showrunner due to tensions and pressures from other co-showrunner Taylor Sheridan and star Sylvester Stallone, has rejoined the series as a writer.

Specifically, the factors were Sheridan’s “self-professed preference” for being very hands-on with his shows. Stallone, meanwhile, has firm writing opinions for his projects. He has of course written and co-written the screenplays for many of his hit films across his career. As it stands, Winter, who is co-writer of Bob Marley: One Love, continues as executive producer, while this new arrangement narrows his focus on the show’s writing amidst a busy schedule that includes co-writing and executive producing Midge, a film coming from Leonardo DiCaprio’s Appian Way production company, and writing and producing the adaptation of the Casey Sherman novel A Murder in Hollywood. His previous TV work includes writing and executive producing on the latter five seasons of The Sopranos and subsequently creating writing, and executive producing HBO series Boardwalk Empire and Vinyl, as one of four credited creators on the latter. The new position allows him to maintain his strong working relationship with Stallone, while kept a bit away from Sheridan. “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,” a source close to the production has said.

Meanwhile, Tulsa King will go on without a traditional showrunner and instead name an executive producer and director, whose deal is being finalized, to lead production going forward. It seems typical of 101 Studios productions. Stallone stars as New York mafia capo Dwight “The General” Manfredi, who, after spending 25 years in prison, is unceremoniously exiled by his boss and relocated to Tulsa, Oklahoma. Realizing the betrayal by his mob family was most certainly for their own interests over his, Dwight slowly builds a ragtag crew to help him establish a new criminal empire. The first season also stars Andrea Savage, Garrett Hedlund, Dana Delany, Martin Starr, Max Casella, Domenick Lombardozzi, Vincent Piazza, Jay Will, and A.C. Peterson. Stallone is also an executive producer with Sheridan, Winter, David C. Glasser, Ron Burkle, Bob Yari, David Hutkin, Allen Coulter and Braden Aftergood. The series is also produced by MTV Entertainment Studios.

Source: The Hollywood Reporter