We live in a time when The Super Mario Bros. Movieand various colorful franchise installments have emerged as the dominant form of animation on the big screen. It seems like eons have passed since one of the most challenging animated movies ever made broke through the clutter and won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature. The movie in question is currently streaming in the United States on Paramount+, but not for much longer. It marked a hotly anticipated reunion between star Johnny Depp and director Gore Verbinski, who were coming off three blockbuster Pirates of the Caribbean movies. In many ways, the animated feature was a blank-check project, and true to form, they used the freedom to push the boundaries of the format.
The movie was inspired not by a children’s novel, but by Western classics such as The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, For a Few Dollars More, Once Upon a Time in the West, and Depp’s prior work such as Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. One of the most prominent influences on the film’s story was the classic noir film Chinatown, starring Jack Nicholson. Unlike Shark Tale, the DreamWorks movie that borrowed heavily from The Godfather, Depp and Verbinski’s film didn’t exactly target children as its primary audience. The risk paid off, with the movie not only winning the Oscar for Best Animated Feature, but also doubling its budget at the box office.
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Collider Exclusive · Taylor Sheridan Universe Quiz Which Taylor Sheridan Show Do You Belong In? Yellowstone · Landman · Tulsa King · Mayor of Kingstown
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Four worlds. All of them brutal, complicated, and built on power, loyalty, and the price of survival. Taylor Sheridan doesn’t write heroes — he writes people who do what they have to do and live with the cost. Ten questions will reveal which one of his worlds you were made for.
🤠Yellowstone
🛢️Landman
👑Tulsa King
⚖️Mayor of Kingstown
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Where does your power come from? In Sheridan’s world, everyone has leverage. The question is what kind.
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Who do you put first, no matter what? Loyalty in Sheridan’s universe is always absolute — and always costly.
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Someone crosses a line. How do you respond? Every Sheridan protagonist has a line. What matters is what happens after it’s crossed.
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Where do you feel most in your element? Sheridan’s worlds are as much about place as they are about people.
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How do you feel about operating in the grey? Nobody in a Sheridan show has clean hands. The question is how they carry the dirt.
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What are you actually fighting to hold onto? Every Sheridan character is fighting a war. The real question is what they’re defending.
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How do you lead? Authority in Sheridan’s world is never given — it’s established, maintained, and constantly tested.
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Someone new arrives and tries to change how things work. Your reaction? Every Sheridan show has an outsider disrupting an established order. Sometimes that outsider is you.
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What has your position cost you? Nobody gets to where these characters are without paying for it. The bill is always personal.
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When it’s over, what do you want people to say? Sheridan’s characters all know the ending is coming. The question is what they leave behind.
Sheridan Has Spoken You Belong In…
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The show that claimed the most of your answers is the world you were built for. If two tied, both are shown — you’re complicated enough to straddle two Sheridan universes.
🤠 Yellowstone
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🛢️ Landman
👑 Tulsa King
⚖️ Mayor of Kingstown
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You are a Dutton — or you might as well be. You understand that some things are worth protecting at any cost, and that the modern world’s indifference to history, to land, to legacy, is not something you’re willing to accept quietly. You lead from the front, you carry your family’s weight without complaint, and when someone threatens what’s yours, you don’t escalate — you finish it. You’re not cruel. But you are absolute. In Yellowstone’s world, that combination of ferocity and loyalty doesn’t make you a villain. It makes you the only thing standing between everything that matters and everyone who wants to take it.
You thrive in the chaos of high-stakes negotiation, where the money is enormous, the margins are thin, and the wrong word in the wrong room can cost everyone everything. You’re a fixer — the person called when a situation is already on fire and needs someone with the nerve to walk into it. West Texas oil country rewards exactly what you are: sharp, adaptable, unsentimental, and absolutely clear-eyed about what people want and what they’ll do to get it. You’re not naive enough to think this world is fair. You’re smart enough to be the one deciding who it’s fair to.
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You are a Dwight Manfredi — someone who has served their time, paid their dues, and arrived somewhere unexpected with nothing but their reputation and their wits. You adapt without losing yourself. You build loyalty through respect rather than fear, though you’re not above reminding people that the two aren’t mutually exclusive. Tulsa King is for people who are still standing when everyone assumed they’d be finished — who find, in an unfamiliar place, that they’re more capable than the world gave them credit for. You don’t need a throne. You build one, wherever you happen to land.
You carry the weight of a system that is broken by design, and you do it anyway — because someone has to, and because you’re the only one positioned to do it without the whole thing collapsing. Mike McLusky’s world is for people who are comfortable operating where there are no good options, only less catastrophic ones. You speak every language: law enforcement, criminal, political, human. That fluency makes you invaluable and it makes you a target. You’ve made your peace with both. Mayor of Kingstown belongs to people who understand that keeping the peace is not the same as being at peace — and who do the job regardless.
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Here’s How Long You Have Left to Watch the Animated Hit on Paramount+
We’re talking, of course, about Rango. The movie features Depp as a chameleon who becomes the sheriff of a town named Dirt and finds himself in a conspiracy. Other voice actors in the film’s cast include Abigail Breslin, Isla Fisher, Alfred Molina, Bill Nighy, Ray Winstone, Harry Dean Stanton, and Timothy Olyphant. Produced on a reported budget of $135 million — virtually the same as the other Paramount and Nickelodeon animated offering of 2011, The Adventures of Tintin — the movie grossed nearly $250 million at the worldwide box office. It now holds a “Certified Fresh” 88% score on the aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, where the consensus reads, “Rango is a smart, giddily creative burst of beautifully animated entertainment, and Johnny Depp gives a colorful vocal performance as a household pet in an unfamiliar world.” You can watch the film on Paramount+ until September 1, and stay tuned to Collider for more updates.
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