Taylor Sheridan’s New 8-Part Crime Western Is Breaking Bad Meets Pulp Fiction

Published Jul 15, 2026, 11:30 AM EDT

Following three seasons of Stallone’s Tulsa King, its sister series Frisco King places Samuel L. Jackson at the center of a crime story set on the outskirts of Dallas, Texas. Frisco is especially familiar territory for Taylor Sheridan, who grew up in nearby Fort Worth.

While Tulsa King season 4 is also on the way, Frisco King offers a unique blend of gangster and Western tropes the way only Breaking Bad has managed to do on the small screen in recent decades. At the same time, Jackson’s protagonist Russell Lee Washington Jr. feels like an older version of Jules Winnfield from Pulp Fiction.

Although Sheridan’s new TV show won’t be the next Breaking Bad, and will differ from Quentin Tarantino’s greatest movie in most meaningful respects, it will undoubtedly remind audiences of these two touchstones of the crime genre. Frisco King will blend the sparse landscapes and narco thrills of Walter White’s story with the snappy, joke-filled dialogue of Pulp Fiction.

Taylor Sheridan’s Latest Crime Western Is Frisco King Starring Samuel L. Jackson

With a debut on Paramount+ anticipated for the first half of 2027, Frisco King is currently in production, with filming taking place in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. The show’s title was changed from NOLA King after Taylor Sheridan stepped in to rewrite the first season himself.

As a result, Samuel L. Jackson is appearing in his first overtly Western release since Quentin Tarantino’s movies Django Unchained and The Hateful Eight. Set in the suburban city of Frisco, around 20 miles north of central Dallas, the show will combine the high-stakes crime drama and gangland violence of a drug-smuggling enterprise with a supporting cast of Texan cowboys.

Much like Landman and Dutton Ranch, Sheridan’s other ongoing Westerns set in the Lone Star State, Frisco King’s protagonist will be confronted with some of the biggest criminal cartels in the United States, whose operations benefit from their proximity to the Mexican border. On the other hand, we should also expect Sylvester Stallone to cameo as Tulsa-based mobster Dwight Manfredi.

Jackson’s character Russell Lee Washington Jr. has already been introduced to us in Tulsa King season 3, during an episode which effectively served as a backdoor pilot for Frisco King. The spinoff moves Washington to a brand-new location, as he decides to start afresh with his own criminal outfit in Northern Texas.

Frisco King Feels Like Breaking Bad Crossed With Pulp Fiction

Tulsa King has already given us a glimpse of what we can expect from its sister series, in a scene which sees Samuel L. Jackson and Sylvester Stallone exchanging sarcastic barbs while sat in the front seats of a car. This sequence sets the tone for plenty more homages to Jackson’s career-defining performance in Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction.

Tarantino has famously dismissed Yellowstone as a glorified soap opera, but this brutal assessment of Taylor Sheridan’s flagship TV Western doesn’t appear to have put him off referencing the legendary director’s movie in Frisco King. Yet, there’s another groundbreaking crime drama that the Tulsa King spinoff has even more in common with.

Vince Gilligan’s Breaking Bad is the ultimate fish-out-of-water narco thriller on television, which purposely leans into Western visual and thematic tropes to tell its story. If Frisco King can emulate half of what this modern-day masterpiece has achieved in terms of popularity and critical acclaim, it could become Sheridan’s biggest success yet.