FORT WORTH, Texas — Just two weeks before “Landman” Season 2 premieres, the show’s co-creator returned to Fort Worth to speak about the oil industry series.

About 50 people gathered inside Fort Works Art the evening of Sunday, Nov. 2, to hear Christian Wallace talk about adapting his “Boomtown” podcast into the Paramount+ show. The event was part of the 19th annual Lone Star Film Festival.

Wallace, a former Texas Monthly writer, spoke about the journey from podcasting to television writing and how he met “Landman” co-creator Taylor Sheridan.

‘Learning to roughneck’ and creating ‘Boomtown’

Wallace grew up in Andrews, Texas, just north of the Midland-Odessa area.

The oil business was in a bust when he was born in the late 1980s, so for most of his life, more people were moving out of West Texas than in. When the oil isn’t flowing, it’s a bad deal for the surrounding community —not just for the industry.

Wallace recalled a story of him riding with his parents between Midland and Andrews.

“My parents looked out the window and none of those pumpjacks are going up and down,” he said. “That meant hard times.”

After graduating from Texas State University, Wallace lived in Ireland for a couple of years while pursuing his master’s degree.

It was there where he started to appreciate the differences of the place where he grew up. Around that time, Wallace got a call from a friend in West Texas who told him to come back home. There was an oil boom going on.

Having never been home when things were booming, he packed his bags and headed that way. Wallace said he ended up roughnecking for just over a year, working a variety of jobs.

After one too many close calls, he got back to his passion of writing and landed an internship at Texas Monthly. Starting out as a fact-checker, Wallace was eventually able to use his pen.

“The very first story that I wrote for them was an article called ‘Learning to Roughneck,’” he said.

As Wallace’s career was taking off, so was the oil boom. There was just one problem: Nobody was writing stories about the people impacted by it.

Wallace wrote a feature for Texas Monthly about the boom that caught the eye of California-based Imperative Entertainment. At the time, Imperative decided to start a podcast branch to generate its own intellectual property that could be turned into film and television projects.

While admittedly never being a “podcast guy,” Wallace said he learned to appreciate the medium and decided to pursue the project.

“Podcasts are a medium in which the subjects are truly, literally allowed to speak for themselves,” he said. “One of the things about West Texas is how important the voices are out there.”

Meeting Taylor Sheridan

The first interaction between Wallace and Taylor Sheridan came before “Yellowstone” was made.

Wallace’s first Texas Monthly cover story was about Myrtis Dightman, the first Black cowboy to qualify for the National Finals Rodeo. The article was the first thing Wallace wrote to generate attention in Hollywood, as something that could be developed into a project.

During this time, Wallace said he saw “Hell or High Water” and “Wind River” in quick succession since they both came out within a year of each other. While both are Sheridan-written projects, Sheridan handled directing duties on “Wind River.”

Wallace said he was so impressed with both films that he thought Sheridan was the guy to adapt the Dightman story. He soon found an address for Sheridan, who lived in Utah at the time, and mailed a copy of the magazine to him never expecting to hear back.

“A few months later, I got a phone call, and it was Taylor,” Wallace said.

Sheridan was in the midst of shooting “Yellowstone” and asked Wallace what he wanted to pursue with the Dightman story.

In the meantime, the story was optioned to be developed by Tom Hanks’ Playtone Company. But, Wallace said that started a dialogue with Sheridan.

Around a year later, Wallace wrote a story about legendary lawman Bass Reeves. Sheridan was again in the mix for the project, but Leonardo DiCaprio’s Appian Way Productions swooped in for the rights.

Finally, when “Boomtown” released in 2019, Sherdian and 101 Studios were the first out of the gate.

“It was like, three swings and a home run,” Wallace said.

Adapting ‘Boomtown’ into ‘Landman’

Wallace said that Sheridan already had an idea in mind for an oil drama series to star Billy Bob Thornton.

By securing the rights to “Boomtown,” this was a world that Sheridan could drop these characters and stories into. And they did just that.

In 2020, Wallace and Sheridan began talking about the show and then spent about two years putting it together. Wallace recalls Sheridan inviting him to the sets of “1883” and “Lawman: Bass Reeves” to chat about making the project.

It was a long buildup to the show being filmed and released in 2024, but Wallace and Sheridan bounced ideas and characters off each other the whole time.

“There were certain things that we talked about that I could just see Taylor light up,” Wallace said.

After two years of talk, Sheridan asked Wallace if he wanted to write a script.

Wallace did, and he recalled getting a phone call from Sheridan a couple of days after sending him the completed script.

“[Sheridan] said, ‘You’re gonna be the co-creator, executive producer of the show. I want you on board to help me,’” Wallace said.

After that, the duo got to work and, all these years later, “Landman” Season 2 premieres Nov. 16 on Paramount+.

©2025 Fort Worth Star-Telegram. Visit at star-telegram.com Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.