It has been three and a half years since Matthew McConaughey’s name first collided with Taylor Sheridan’s in the headlines—amid the Yellowstone turmoil that eventually saw Kevin Costner exit and the flagship series wind down. In that time the wider Sheridan machine has only grown: 1923 finished its run, Marshals and Dutton Ranch launched, The Madison arrived, and Sheridan himself signed a rich new overall deal with NBCUniversal. Easy to assume the McConaughey talks had quietly died. They have not. Speaking to The Playlist ahead of The Rivals of Amziah King, the actor said conversations with Sheridan are ongoing—nothing is locked, but nothing is dead either.

“Nothing’s real yet”—but it is not less of a thing

Asked whether Yellowstone-adjacent plans had collapsed, McConaughey answered with careful neutrality. “No, I mean, it’s not any more of a thing than it was or probably any less of a thing than it was that did hit the headlines there for a while. Taylor and I have spoken and have continued to have conversations about what [it could be] and if that would be whatever. But nothing’s real yet.”

That is not a green light. It is also not a eulogy. Both men have been busy; McConaughey with film, Sheridan with an industrial-scale TV slate and a studio shift. The update simply restores the rumour to its proper status: active possibility, waiting on an idea both will commit to.

Why the pairing still makes sense on paper

Sheridan’s world runs on Texas dust, moral compromise, drawling menace and men who sound like they have already lost something. McConaughey’s post-True Detective Season 1 aura—philosophical, dangerous, charismatic without softness—fits that register as cleanly as almost any A-lister not already inside the company. The original reports landed when Yellowstone needed a future beyond Costner; the brand no longer has that single crisis, but it still has prequels, Texas spin-offs and empty narrative space. What follows are the kinds of vehicles fans and columnists keep pitching while the two men keep talking.

Idea 1: Put him at the head of 1944

1883 and 1923 proved the prequel model works for Paramount+. A third chapter—1944 or whatever wartime/mid-century slot Sheridan chooses—has been oddly quiet, possibly slowed by the end of Sheridan’s Paramount overall deal, possibly only paused. If it proceeds, McConaughey as the era’s Dutton patriarch is the most obvious “event” casting left in the toolbox: a bridge from Tim McGraw’s James and Harrison Ford’s Jacob into a generation defined by war, oil and the modern ranch’s harder edges.

Stunt-adjacent co-leads write themselves in fan discourse—Kate Hudson for a full-circle rom-com-to-prestige pivot, or even a wild-card Woody Harrelson appearance—but the spine would be McConaughey carrying a limited series with the same solemn weight Ford brought to 1923.

Idea 2: A blood relative on Dutton Ranch

Dutton Ranch already runs hot with Texas land, cartel pressure and the Jackson family’s buried violence. One speculative path: give Luke—the man tied to Beulah Jackson’s assault and Rob-Will’s parentage—a brother who never settled the score, then let Rob-Will’s murder pull that brother back into the open and into the Jacksons’ path. McConaughey as that delayed instrument of revenge would be pure Sheridan: charming on the surface, catastrophic underneath.

A softer variant puts him in Everett’s past—a nephew, an estranged relation, a fellow veteran (veterinary or military)—someone whose reappearance complicates Rip and Beth’s Texas foothold. The leap is smaller than it looks: McConaughey and Cole Hauser already share Dazed and Confused history and are reteaming with Nic Pizzolatto for a Netflix project. Shared muscle memory on a set is not nothing.

Idea 3: Reboot the 6666 idea around him

For years the most persistent Yellowstone offshoot rumour was a series at the Four Sixes Ranch—the real Texas property Sheridan bought, the destination that pulled Jefferson White’s Jimmy south. Walker (Ryan Bingham) was reported as a likely piece of that ensemble. The show never materialised. McConaughey as a mentor-enforcer figure—someone who could push Jimmy from likable cowboy toward Rip-style hardness, in a more action-forward Texas series without Marshals’ procedural chassis—would be a clean way to revive interest and give Paramount+ (or whoever holds the rights puzzle) a star-shaped reason to try again.

And the rest of the wall

The list does not stop there: a Landman cameo engineered mostly so McConaughey and Billy Bob Thornton can share a full episode of competitive drawl; an original “true detective” on protected Dutton land; any original Sheridan script that is not forced into existing mythology. The point of the exercise is less prediction than appetite. Fans are not short on ways to use him. The bottleneck is the same one McConaughey named—finding the whatever that feels real to both.

What to watch while you wait

Until that lands, the tangible next McConaughey screen appointment is The Rivals of Amziah King, in theatres 21 August 2026—no Dutton brand attached. Sheridan’s slate will keep expanding under the NBCUniversal deal and whatever remains of the Paramount universe. Somewhere between those two calendars, the conversations continue. Three and a half years on, that is more than most headline pairings get—and still less than a start date.