Ten years after his collaboration with Taylor Sheridan on Hell or High Water, TIFF attendee David Mackenzie discusses a possible reunion with the Yellowstone creator.

Sheridan’s dominance in the world of streaming indeed began with his hugely successful Paramount+ neo-Western series starring Kevin Costner, but Yellowstone was not the first of Sheridan’s projects to put a modern spin on the most American of genres.

2016 saw the release of Hell or High Water, a bleak modern-day Western written but not directed by Sheridan. The movie was a modest box office success, grossing $37.9 million on a budget of $12 million, while snapping up four Oscar nominations, including one for Sheridan’s screenplay.

As for the possibility of Hell or High Water‘s writer and director getting back together, Mackenzie gave a neutral update to ScreenRant’s Tatiana Hullender on the TIFF red carpet for his new movie Fuze:

I don’t know! I mean, I haven’t seen Taylor for a long, long time, but I very much enjoyed working with him. When I read that script for the first time, I thought it was really wonderful. And Taylor’s done amazing stuff since.

What This Means For Sheridan And Mackenzie

Mackenzie’s comments from TIFF indicate that he and Sheridan are not only not working on anything new together, they are not particularly in contact. All the same, Mackenzie is complimentary toward not only Sheridan’s Hell or High Water script, but his subsequent output as well.

Sheridan made the leap to director himself on 2017’s Wind River, following that up with Those Who Wish Me ᴅᴇᴀᴅ, while writing Sicario and its first sequel, plus Michael B. Jordan’s Without Remorse. But his career truly exploded when he created Yellowstone, introducing the world to Montana ranching clan the Duttons. Spinoffs followed, including the hugely successful 1923.

Sheridan’s ever-growing stable of streaming shows now includes Tulsa King, Mayor of Kingstown, Lioness and Landman. Mackenzie, for his part, has stayed in the feature film realm, directing three movies including his new TIFF offering Fuze, a heist film starring Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Theo James, Sam Worthington, and Gugu Mbatha-Raw.

Our Take On Mackenzie’s Sheridan Collaboration Update

Given where the two men are in their careers, it seems unlikely that Mackenzie and Sheridan would have reason to collaborate again. If they did reunite, it would likely be on the small screen, with Mackenzie going to work as an episode director for one of Sheridan’s shows.

Sheridan seems content with small screen projects for now, but if he did go back to feature films, he would almost certainly direct as well as write. Hell or High Water will likely remain the only Mackenzie-Sheridan collaboration, but when the result is such an acclaimed film, one is more than enough.