Paramount+ has announced the release date for the upcoming streaming debut of Barron’s Cove, the latest crime thriller movie led by Tulsa King star Garrett Hedlund. Since its theatrical and VOD release last June, the film has received a Tomatometer rating of 62% on Rotten Tomatoes, based on 26 reviews.
“The film follows a father with a violent past (Hedlund) as he grieves the sudden loss of his only child. Convinced of a cover-up and intent on obtaining answers about his son’s death, he kidnaps the troubled boy he holds responsible — the son of a prominent local politician — which ignites a media firestorm and frenzied manhunt,” reads the official synopsis. “But as he grows ever closer to uncovering the truth, he is left to wonder whether his pursuers are really seeking to protect the boy, or merely the secrets he keeps.”
When is the Paramount+ release date for Tulsa King star’s Barron’s Cove movie?
Barron’s Cove will be available for streaming starting on January 1, 2026, exclusively on Paramount+. The R-rated movie also stars Christian Convery as Ethan, Tramell Tillman as Felix, Raúl Castillo as Navarro, Stephen Lang as Benji, and more.
The movie was written and directed by Evan Ari Kelman. It was produced by Jordan Beckerman, Jason Michael Berman, Chadd Harbold, Parker Hill, Seth Kelman, Jordan Yale Levine, Bannor Michael MacGregor, Nick Phillips, Will Raynor, Derek Rubin, Shaun Sanghani, and Cory Thompson. The creative team also included cinematographer Matthew Jensen and editor Hanna Park.
In an interview with ComingSoon, Hedlund shared what made him sign on to the project, revealing that he was interested in exploring the lengths that parents will go through for their child.
“I was reading the script, and my son was just nearing two years old. It started off pretty extreme. But I saw a father that was just trying to do, for once in his life, everything right for his son,” he recalled. “That was something I could relate to. Towards the end of the script, there was something that was answered to Caleb, my character, that was so tender. Something that an officer tells him. It made me realize that the underbelly of Caleb, throughout this whole film and on his journey of revenge, was really just so vulnerably wondering if he was enough. If he was enough of a father.”
Hedlund continued, “This is a man who has done some severely distorted things. Those things have haunted him; he carries a lot of guilt for those things. He didn’t want them to repeat, certainly not for his son. I just thought that was so tender and unique that I wanted to explore that in this film. And it posed the question to me, as I’m sure it will to the audience, of how far will you go for your child? How far is too far when you think you’re right? How far is too far when it comes to revenge? How far is too far involving guilt? What is the cost of carrying guilt, and what does it take to let it go? It was a unique palette to play with.”
On today’s episode of the “Daily Variety” podcast, we’ll hear from Variety‘s Owen Gleiberman about his rediscovery of an under-appreciated Martin Scorsese classic, 1995’s “Casino.” And Joe Otterson unpacks his reporting on the turmoil behind the scenes on Sylvester Stallone’s “Tulsa King” series as the Taylor Sheridan drama shoots Season 4 in Atlanta.
We learned last month that Call of Duty would be making the leap to the big screen with a planned motion picture project. Today, Deadline reported that two of the main creative forces behind the movie will be Taylor Sheridan and Peter Berg.
Sheridan and Berg previously both worked on the 2016 film Hell or High Water and 2017’s Wind River. Berg was a producer on those projects, but he’s perhaps better known as a writer for the football drama Friday Night Lights. Sheridan’s most recent endeavor was TV series Yellowstone, and he also worked on Lioness, Mayor of Kingstown and Tulsa King. For Paramount’s Call of Duty adaptation, both will produce and co-write, while Berg is currently on board to direct.
Since the writers and director have only just been locked down, there still hasn’t been any public discussion of what era of the lucrative CoD franchise the movie will tackle. Based on the duo’s past work, something contemporary seems most likely, but it may be awhile before we have any confirmation of the story or casting.
Paramount+ has formally renewed Taylor Sheridan’s popular crime drama Tulsa King, starring Sylvester Stallone, for a fourth season. The news comes on the night of the Season 3 red carpet event in New York and ahead of the season’s Paramount+ debut on Sunday, Sept. 21. There is a change at the helm for Season 4, with Terence Winter returning as executive producer and head writer and Season 3 showrunner Dave Erickson exiting, Deadline has learned exclusively.
Tulsa King, from Paramount TV Studios and 101 Studios, was earmarked for a two-year (Seasons 3 and 4) renewal when series star and executive producer Stallone closed a new deal last November to continue on the show for two more seasons. Season 3 renewal was announced in March, with Season 4 expected to follow.
This is not envisioned as Tulsa King‘s final chapter, I hear. According to sources, talks are underway with Stallone for a new two-year deal and, if the series’ ratings continue to be strong, it could go to six seasons.
Boardwalk Empire creator Winter served as executive producer and showrunner on Tulsa King‘s first season. He stepped down as showrunner after the end of the season before rejoining the series as Head Writer/executive producer in Season 2. He was based largely in the writers room, with producing director Craig Zisk handling on-set showrunner duties.
Tulsa King went back to having a formal showrunner in Season 3 with Mayor of Kingstown showrunner Erickson taking on those duties. Erickson, who recently also stepped down as showrunner of the upcoming Tulsa King spinoff series, NOLA King, starring Samuel L. Jackson, will now focus solely on Mayor of Kingstown. NOLA King will be introduced on Tulsa King, with Jackson guest starring on Season 3.
This marks a full-time return to Tulsa King for Winter, who was a consultant in Season 3. Like in Season 2, there is no separate showrunner
Tulsa King‘s second season delivered Paramount+’s most watched global premiere at the time with 21.1 million viewers for the opening episode. It was the #1 global Paramount+ original series in 2024 and a Top 10 original series across all SVODs in Q4.
In Season 3, as Dwight’s (Stallone) empire expands, so do his enemies – and the risks to his crew. Now, he faces his most dangerous adversaries in Tulsa yet: the Dunmires, a powerful old-money family that doesn’t play by old-world rules, forcing Dwight to fight for everything he’s built and protect his family.
From left: McKenna Quigley Harrington, Bella Heathcote, Martin Starr, Vincent Piazza, Dana Delany, Sylvester Stallone, Annabella Sciorra, Frank Grillo, Garrett Hedlund and Jay Will
Bennett Raglin/Getty Images for Paramount+
The series also stars Martin Starr, Jay Will, Annabella Sciorra, Neal McDonough, Robert Patrick, Beau Knapp, Bella Heathcote, Chris Caldovino, McKenna Quigley Harrington, Mike “Cash Flo” Walden, Kevin Pollak, Vincent Piazza, Frank Grillo, Michael Beach, James Russo, with Garrett Hedlund and Dana Delany.
Jackson will appear in Season 3 as Russell Lee Washington Jr. before headlining NOLA King.
Produced by Paramount Television Studios and 101 Studios, Tulsa King Season 3 is executive produced by Sheridan, Sylvester Stallone, Dave Erickson, David C. Glasser, Ron Burkle, David Hutkin, Bob Yari, Jim McKay, Sheri Elwood, Ildy Modrovich and Keith Cox. Erickson also serves as showrunner. The series is distributed by Paramount Global Content Distribution.
Provided you’re the sort of viewer who doesn’t mind when characters say cartoonishly crime drama things like “Shit just got real” or “Here’s $100 — go buy yourself a life,” there’s actually a lot to like in this week’s episode of Tulsa King. Granted, that’s a big ask, considering the number of truly excellent crime shows that have aired this year. (Fargo season five didn’t wrap until January, and that’s just for starters!)
It’s also a tall order when you compare and contrast a lot of this stuff to what head Terence Winter, who co-wrote the episode with William Schmidt, served up on The Sopranos or Boardwalk Empire. Winter has not lost his fastball, as we’ll discuss, but he is playing a less rewarding game. If the remit is “Help Stallone look tough and have a good time,” well, that’s a less exciting mission to accomplish than “chronicle the way America produces joyless sociopaths able only to hurt and steal from others until they die.”
But I said there’s good stuff in this episode, and I mean it. For instance, the story of Armand, the accidental turncoat semi-ex-mafia guy played by Max Casella, could easily have come from either of the crime masterpieces Winter worked on. One by one, everyone Armand counts on to help him dodge the inevitable wrath of Dwight: The boss knows Armand’s the one who fed key intel to his rival, Cal Thresher, and payback is just a matter of time.
Armand calls his ex, but when she sees that he’s half in the bag at 9 a.m. and wants her to join witness protection with him, she tells him to lose her number. Enraged, he blows up at Spencer, his underling at the ranch, leading to an argument with his boss, Margaret, that ends in his firing. He turns to his erstwhile benefactor, Thresher, who pretty much laughs in his face; if Dwight’s onto him, he’s no longer useful.
Casella packs a wallop in his final pair of scenes. First, in an underpass, he leaves a tearful, uncomfortably candid message for one of his sons, in which the pain of life as a perpetual fuckup is etched into his face. Then, with desperation visible in his eyes and his pained grimace, he sticks up Tulsa’s consigliere, Goodie, and makes off with a sack of the outfit’s cash. His bluster on the way out the door seems like a cover-up for the knowledge he’s a dead man walking.
Less emotional but equally effective dramatically is the apparent denouement of the Vince/Chickie power struggle back in New York. With the approval of the rest of Chickie’s capos and the bosses of the other families, Vince makes his move. But it’s not a hit — it’s a firing. His fellow bosses and his own men simply tell him, “You’re out,” and that’s that, he’s out. “Obviously, this coulda gone a different way, but we didn’t wanna do that,” comes the explanation, and the implication that it could still go that different way if Chickie resists.
“You lost the locker room, pal,” says one of the assembled wise guys. “That’s the bottom line.” Indeed, what can he do? If everyone’s in agreement that he’s no longer the boss, the reality is he’s no longer the boss. But Vince — perhaps patronizingly, perhaps not — leaves the door open for a potential new role for the dethroned don: “Get the drinking under control, couple of months, we’ll see what’s what.” I think Chickie should count his lucky stars, but he’s got to find it humiliating, perhaps even worse than getting whacked — same as Mitch telling the reckless Tyson that getting arrested is worse than getting killed because it puts everyone in jeopardy. Like the Armand material, it all plays out like a late-season Sopranos mini-arc, which is high praise.
(Side note: Earlier in the episode, Chickie made a pact with Dwight to leave his daughter and grandkids alone now that they’re moving back to New York City for safety’s sake. Vince, however, was out at the time making plans, and never got the message. Since going after family members is considered taboo by these guys anyway, though, I’m not sure if that omission will come into play.)
Chickie’s not the only king who falls to an uprising in this episode. Cal Thresher is barely done big-dogging Armand when the same fate befalls him. His Triad partner, Jackie Ming, simply decides to take over the whole operation, and again, that’s that, he takes over. I mean, Cal gets the classic offer he can’t refuse, where either his signature or his brains will be on the contract signing over his weed farm to this group of gangsters. What else can he do?
His best bet, he figures, is to look to his business associate Bill Bevilaqua for assistance. If Ming can steamroll him, Thresher argues, then anyone else with interests in the sector is in jeopardy. But Bevilaqua will have none of it — he’s enraged to learn that Ming planted the car bomb that sent him and Dwight to their battle stations, and blames Thresher for dragging them into the war.
That war has claimed another Tulsa casualty. While Tyson’s father, Mark, improves in the hospital after the car bombing, Dwight’s weed gurus Bodhi and Jimmy are shot at by Kansas City hitters, in retaliation for Tyson wounding one of their own in the previous episode. Bodhi escapes harm, but Jimmy winds up with a serious-looking chest wound. Then again, it sure looked like Mark was blown to smithereens, so “serious-looking” is a relative thing on this show.
Wars take on a terrible life of their own, and persist long after there’s any point in fighting, if there even was a point to begin with. (This is the subject of sword-and-sorcery writer Robert E. Howard’s best story about his iconic barbarian Conan, “Red Nails,” just fyi.) If I’m Bill Bevilaqua, I’m getting on the horn with Dwight right away — if he’ll take my calls — to clear the air, maybe even forge an alliance against the guy who ratfucked them into this escalating tit-for-tat. (If you want to be technical about it, Bill started it all way back when he sent his guy to assassinate Dwight, only for Dwight to have the guy killed instead. They seem to be taking a mulligan on all that.)
But if the attack on Jimmy was fatal, that screws everything up. Dwight is not a forgiving guy, and he’ll go eye-for-eye on murder. And just like that, my hopes for a classic Terence Winter multi-faction bloodbath go up another notch.
Sylvester Stallone is an old mafia capo just out of prison. ATF agents are trying to crack down on a white nationalist biker gang. Martin Starr owns a weed shop. One would think those were three separate storylines from three very different television shows, but one would be very, very wrong!
Because all three are woven seamlessly together into the insanity that is Taylor Sheridan’s (creator of Yellowstone) new series, Tulsa King.
Tulsa King follows Stallone as Dwight Manfredi, a capo who just finished doing twenty-five years of hard time as the fall guy for his don. He kept his trap shut and now that he’s out he expects to be rewarded for his loyalty. Unfortunately for him, times have changed and his boss has a short memory, and so his “reward” is to be sent to Tulsa, Oklahoma to get a foothold for the family going. Manfredi is not just a man out of time, having to learn about iPhones and Uber and social media, but now a man out of his territory. He is a fish out of water, but doubly so.
And yet nothing truly phases Manfredi. Stallone plays him with a befuddled but hard affability. A dangerous man, but one who is still ultimately likable as he bemusedly takes in his new surroundings and tries to learn about things like vape pens and pronouns. Manfredi is Rocky Balboa – if Balboa had stayed as a low-level enforcer and street tough. Manfredi quickly hires himself a driver named Tyson, (played by the charming and charismatic Jay Will) and his first order of business is taking over Martin Starr’s weed shop. His second order of business is having a one-night stand with ATF agent Stacey Beale. He also quickly ropes in his former associate Armand Truisi (who has been in hiding for twenty-five years) and befriends Mitch Keller (Garrett Hedlund) the owner of his favorite watering hole, the “Bred2Buck Saloon.”
Yes. The Bred2Buck Saloon.
The name of that saloon is indicative of what makes this show so strange and incredibly watchable. The tone is constantly shifting from the serious to the ludicrous. Is it a drama? Is it a comedy? Is it a soapy crime procedural? Yes. The audience careens alongside Manfredi as events happen quickly and without fanfare. This show is not going to spend eight episodes building to his eventual move to Tulsa as he slowly tries to piece his life back together. Oh no.
Within the first 10 minutes of the pilot, we watch Manfredi get out of prison, beat a guy with a phone, and get on a plane to Tulsa. Wham bam thank you, ma’am. In fact, we watch Stallone’s Manfredi in a series of increasingly strange and hilarious scenarios. We watch Stallone escort a bachelorette party into a strip club (and beat up the bouncers when they want the women to get off the stage.) We watch Stacey the ATF agent freak out that she slept with a 75-year-old man, (Stallone) to his face. Oh to have been in the room when Sheridan pitched that to Stallone! We watch Stallone hotbox a car with Martin Starr and go on a rant about Arthur Miller! There’s a white stallion that wanders around downtown Tulsa and you think it’s perhaps a visual metaphor or Manfredi’s guilty conscience, but actually it is a literal horse that everyone can see. (So I guess the answer, like for much of this show is: yes all of the above.)
We even get a Stallone cowboy makeover (well, almost)! As a fan of the truly horrible and amazing Rhinestone – starring Stallone and Dolly Parton, about a country western singer tasked with turning a New York City cab driver into a new country star – my heart was soaring.
But just as you think the show is leaning a bit too knowingly into this camp sensibility it pulls back and gives you an intimate scene of Manfredi trying to reconnect with the family he isolated himself from for twenty-five years because he couldn’t stand for them to see him locked up. He has a daughter who refuses to take his calls and there is a scene with his dying brother that is particularly heart-wrenching.
And none of this wild tone shifting would be possible without Stallone’s previously mentioned unflappable performance. He, much like Manfredi, is both the unstoppable force and the immovable object. He anchors the whole production with his congenial flexibility. If that sounds like a contradiction, a flexible immovable object, congratulations you now understand what makes the show so fascinating and endlessly watchable.
Because the show really is less about Manfredi having to change to fit in with Tulsa than it is Tulsa having to change to accommodate him. Manfredi is a tornado, plowing through this quiet territory and taking what he wants with little pushback. In this fish out of water story, the fish is a shark, and it’s the water that isn’t ready for him. Case in point, he even convinces Tyson’s concerned and suspicious father into fighting the aforementioned biker gang with them. (What happens next involves a hilarious needle drop and a lot of baseball bats, but I don’t want to spoil everything.)
The show is a wild and fast-moving spectacle. I honestly can’t tell if it’s good good or bad good, but I do know that I love watching it and I can’t wait to see what absolutely buckwild things happen as the season progresses. Because, and I can’t stress this enough, it is the most ludicrous show on television and also I could watch a million more episodes of Sylvester Stallone getting high with Martin Starr.
