Paramount+ released the first teaser for “Frisco King” on Thursday, October 15th, and the “Tulsa King” spinoff now has a date. It premieres Friday, December 18th, with two episodes and adds a new one every Friday after that. Russell Lee Washington Jr. (Samuel L. Jackson) walked into “Tulsa King” in Season 3 as a New Orleans gangster, and now he gets a show of his own. Taylor Sheridan wrote all eight episodes. The teaser runs 30 seconds and spends most of them on money. There are stacks on a desk, a bag stuffed with bills and a wad held up in a young man’s face. It is a lighter pitch than the show it came from, and that may be the smartest thing about it.
The road to Frisco started with a job Lee refused to do. In Season 3 he came to Oklahoma to kill Dwight “The General” Manfredi (Sylvester Stallone). Dwight was the old friend who saved his life when they were in prison together. Lee could not go through with it. He ended up helping Dwight take care of a local liquor magnate instead and left with an idea. His parting words to Dwight were “Seeing what you’ve done here makes me want to go back to New Orleans and maybe start something new.” New Orleans is not where he lands. Paramount+ ordered the series in July 2025 as “NOLA King” and moved the story to Frisco in February under a new title. Warning beyond this point there are spoilers for “Tulsa King” Season 3 and for everything shown in the “Frisco King” teaser.
It is a lighter pitch than the show it came from, and that may be the smartest thing about it.”
The teaser opens on the Paramount+ Original logo over a wooden desk. A hand lays down banded stacks of cash and then a holstered pistol beside a phone and a wallet. An off-camera voice observes, “This feels pretty criminal.” The cut finds Lee in a blue Kangol bucket hat and a striped polo. He sits across from a man whose back is to the lens, and his answer is one word: “And?” A “SAMUEL L. JACKSON” card plays over a dark parking lot. Then Lee strolls along a yellow wall in a flat cap with red bolt cutters over his shoulder. He snaps the lock on a chain-link gate marked “PROPERTY OF” while a young red-haired man in a green rugby shirt watches. Inside is an empty warehouse with two figures framed in its bright open doorway.
Lee’s whole business plan arrives in one line across those shots: “What I do may be considered outside the law.” He finishes it in the passenger seat of a car on a rainy night and talks with his hands at the young man behind the wheel. A hand digs into a bag packed with bills. Then Lee and Dwight walk side by side past a black SUV. Lee wears a brown suit and hat, and Dwight wears a rust double-breasted jacket and dark glasses. A voice tells Lee to see how far he can take it, and ScreenRant and The Dallas Morning News both credit that advice to Stallone. Cheerleaders practice on a field behind a fence. A drone climbs past a white water tower with “FRISCO” painted on its side as a voice says, “In Frisco, Texas.” Lee grins in a bar at night while Dwight sits across a table from him in a blue suit.
The back half moves fast. Hands count piles of cash on a coffee table, and a “FROM EXECUTIVE PRODUCER TAYLOR SHERIDAN” card sits over a dark street. In a diner kitchen washed in blue light a man in a flat cap shoves a bald man along the counter. “SMALL TOWN” fills the screen over rows of matching rooftops. A helicopter sweeps a searchlight and cars tear through dust under red and blue lights. “BIG HUSTLE” runs over a night skyline with a Sandman Signature hotel in the middle of it. Lee raises a pistol in a black-gloved hand in a dark car. In a living room he swings a fistful of cash at a seated gray-haired man, and a pickup truck burns. The question “You want a gangster?” plays over those shots and over a young man in a backward cap beside a fire hydrant. The answer comes on camera. Lee sits in the back of a van crammed with bags and holds up a stack of bills to a young man in a blue cap: “Not so sure now, are you?” He is wearing a lilac polo and a matching cap. The title card follows, then “NEW SERIES DECEMBER 18.”
What the teaser sells is a tone. “Tulsa King” is a mob show with jokes in it. This looks like a hustle comedy with a mob show folded inside, and the bucket hat does a lot of that work. The official logline has Lee discover “a hustler’s playground hidden beneath the polished surface of American suburbia.” He gets there by “Recruiting an ambitious protégé, a loyal driver, and a growing network of eccentric partners,” and those partners have names now. Teddy (Asa Germann) is an entrepreneurial college dropout who catches Lee’s eye. Keith (Kai Caster) works as a valet at the local Sandman Hotel, which explains the sign under the “BIG HUSTLE” card. London (Lilah Pate) is a popular cheerleader Lee recruits. Her friend and fellow cheerleader Avery (Savanna Gann) joins the crew too. Germann comes from “Gen V”, Pate from “Outer Banks” and Gann from “English Teacher”. So the girls on that practice field may not be set dressing.
Stallone is in it but not all of it. Paramount bills him for a special appearance. He told Extra TV he is “going to drop in for a few episodes,” and he got more specific with Collider: “I am in two and a half episodes.” Paramount’s own photos from episode 1 put Lee and Dwight at a bar gripping hands. Garrett Hedlund, another “Tulsa King” regular, stands between them as Mitch. That points to a handoff more than a crossover, and the timing says the same thing. “Tulsa King” Season 4 premieres Friday, October 16th. Its finale lands on December 18th, the same day “Frisco King” starts. One king’s season ends on the day the other’s begins.
This is not the show Paramount first announced. In the July 2025 greenlight, Lee befriended Dwight during a ten-year stint in federal prison. New York’s Renzetti crime family then sent him to Tulsa to kill Dwight. After that he was supposed to go home to New Orleans and take over the city he had left four decades earlier. Paramount called it Jackson’s first time headlining a TV series. Dave Erickson wrote the pilot and was set to run it. He was already the showrunner of “Tulsa King” Season 3 and “Mayor of Kingstown”, and he left that same July over a scheduling conflict. No replacement showrunner was ever named. The February overhaul put Sheridan on every script. “Having him pen all episodes of the season with his singular voice will be a treat for fans of ‘Tulsa King’ and audiences around the world,” said Matt Thunell, president of Paramount Television Studios.
Moving the show to a Dallas suburb also moved it closer to home. Cameras started rolling in late March in Fort Worth, where Deadline notes Sheridan and his collaborator David C. Glasser opened a production campus with Paramount’s backing. The Dallas Morning News reports the shoot covered Dallas, Keller, Denton, Southlake, Fort Worth and Frisco itself, plus time in Atlanta. Christina Alexandra Voros directed the pilot and four episodes in all while Michael Friedman directed the other four. Sheridan, Stallone and Jackson executive produce with Glasser, LaTanya Richardson Jackson and others. Paramount Television Studios and 101 Studios produce.
The release plan is the strangest part. If Paramount+ sticks to every Friday after the two-episode premiere, new episodes of “Frisco King” land on Christmas Day and again on New Year’s Day. That is either a confident streamer or a holiday gift for anyone stuck at the in-laws. The bigger question is the story. A 30-second teaser built on swagger and stacks of cash shows a premise, not a plot. Lee has a protégé, a crew, a hotel and an old friend dropping by. What the teaser never shows is who is coming for him. “Tulsa King” always worked best when somebody pushed back on Dwight. Paramount’s own logline promises that “every new score raises the stakes.” Jackson can carry swagger for eight episodes without trying. Whether Sheridan gave him somebody worth fighting is the part this teaser keeps to itself.
What Do You Think? Is a Dallas suburb a better kingdom for Lee than New Orleans would have been? With Stallone dropping in for only a few episodes, will “Frisco King” hold up without Dwight around? And which of Lee’s new recruits will be the first to cross him?
Catch up properly: every Taylor Sheridan series in chronological order on our Timeline Hub’s Sheridan-verse timeline.
See you on the next binge!
