Down to his last few hundred dollars and without a job, Taylor Sheridan went on a mad dash to produce as many quality scripts as he could before his family lost their home and went hungry. Flash forward to 2012, when the script (then titled Comancheria) won the Blacklist Award for Best Un-produced Script of the Year. In April of that year, producer Sidney Kimmel's company acquired the script, with co-financer and producer Peter Berg attached to direct. Berg never directed the film. That honor went to Scottish director David Mackenzie, who was tasked with crafting the second film in Sheridan's self-described "trilogy of the modern-day American frontier" (the first was 2015's Sicario; the third and final film was 2017's Wind River, which Sheridan wrote and directed).
In that vein, Mackenzie was tasked with telling the story of two brothers named Tanner and Toby Howard who must rob a number of Texas Midlands banks in order to save the Howard family ranch and ensure future generations escape poverty and have a secure and comfortable financial future. There is a considerable amount of oil on their family land and must rob enough money from the banks to prevent greedy oilmen from taking their family land.
The result was to say the least remarkable as Hell or High Water was both incredibly critically and financially successful. At the Academy Awards that year, Hell or High Water received nominations for Best Picture, Best Supporting Actor for Jeff Bridges, Best Original Screenplay for Sheridan, and Best Film Editing. Film critic Richard Roeper loved the film, writing his review that "In ways large and small, Hell or High Water is a movie so beautiful and harsh and elegiac and knowing, the moment it was over was the moment I wanted to see it again." At the box office, Hell or High Water made $37.9 million at the box office against a budget of only $12 million, indicating it made approximately $13.9 million in profit.
