Laird will place an inherited Scottish estate at the centre of a battle over foreign wealth, family power and control of the land, although Paramount has not yet confirmed that the series will be filmed in Scotland.
Kenneth Branagh is to star as the owner of a fictional Highland estate in a new Paramount+ drama about an American billionaire attempting to buy up the surrounding glens.
The streaming service announced on 22 July that it had commissioned Laird, a modern Scottish family saga set around Castle Drummoch. Branagh will play the castle’s laird and serve as an executive producer. Paramount describes his character as a proud Scot determined to prevent a “shadowy American billionaire” from acquiring his ancestral lands.
The series has been created by Jez Butterworth, John-Henry Butterworth and Georgia Lee. Joe Wright, whose films include Pride & Prejudice, Atonement and Darkest Hour, is attached to direct the pilot.
Paramount Television Studios and 101 Studios will produce the programme. Branagh will executive produce alongside David C Glasser, Jez and John-Henry Butterworth, Wright, Ron Burkle, David Hutkin, Bob Yari, Charles Finch and Keith Cox. Paramount says the series will eventually premiere globally and exclusively on Paramount+, but no release date has been announced.
No supporting cast, episode total, production timetable or filming location has been disclosed. There is also no confirmation that a Scottish production company, local authority or screen agency is involved.
That unanswered question is more than an administrative detail. A drama may be set in the Highlands without being substantially made there. The Scottish landscape can be reproduced through a combination of limited location filming, studio interiors and visual effects, leaving far less local expenditure than the setting might suggest.
If Laird is filmed extensively in Scotland, it could become part of an industry that already contributes heavily to the national economy. Screen Scotland’s latest economic assessment found that Scotland’s screen sector generated £718 million in gross value added in 2023, an increase of 15 per cent from 2021. Film, television and audiovisual production spending in Scotland reached £468.3 million during the year.
Large productions can support Scottish actors, technicians, drivers, accommodation providers, caterers, construction workers and location services. None of those benefits can yet be attached to Laird. Paramount’s announcement concerns the commissioning and creative team; it does not establish where the money will be spent.
The involvement of 101 Studios nevertheless gives some indication of the intended scale and tone. The company produces Yellowstone, the American television drama about an established ranching family defending a vast inherited property against developers, political opponents and outside wealth.
Paramount has not described Laird as a Scottish version of Yellowstone. The resemblance in the underlying structure is difficult to miss. Both premises place an imposing patriarch, inherited territory and family loyalty at the centre of a conflict over who will control the land.
The Scottish setting gives that familiar formula a more complicated political character.
Paramount’s description casts the American billionaire as the apparent threat. Branagh’s laird is presented as the defender of home, history and continuity. The first synopsis refers to family feuds, buried secrets and star-crossed romances, but says nothing about the people living or working on the estate.
There is no tenant farmer, crofter, estate worker, community trust or neighbouring village identified in the material released so far.
That may change as the cast and story are developed. At present, however, the central conflict appears to be between two forms of private power: the hereditary landowner who already controls the estate and the foreign billionaire who wishes to acquire it.
Scotland’s actual land debate does not divide so neatly between a virtuous laird and a predatory outsider.
The Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2025 introduced new measures affecting large landholdings, including land-management plans, stronger community-engagement duties, advance notification when certain estates are being sold and a transfer test that may allow ministers to require large areas to be offered in separate lots. The legislation also establishes a Land and Communities Commissioner.
The Scottish Land Commission describes land reform as a question of how land contributes to housing, employment, community power, the environment and local economic opportunity. Its current position is that ownership should be more transparent and accountable to the public interest, regardless of whether the owner is an individual, company or public body.
Foreign ownership forms part of that discussion, although the evidence requires more care than the television premise is likely to allow.
Registers of Scotland recorded 28,825 registered titles with an owner address outside the UK as of 31 December 2025. Those titles represented 4.4 per cent of Scotland’s land area. The United States was the most common overseas address, accounting for 3,749 titles.
A further 113,653 titles had an owner address elsewhere in the UK and represented 17 per cent of Scotland’s land area.
Those figures do not mean that thousands of Highland estates are controlled by foreign billionaires. Most titles with overseas addresses were residential, while only a small proportion were classified as agricultural, forestry or undeveloped land. The statistics record the owner’s address supplied at registration, which may later have changed, and cover registered property titles rather than people or complete estates.
The distinction is necessary because Laird risks giving an emotionally simple shape to an argument that is structurally difficult.
An American billionaire may indeed represent remote capital with little accountability to a Highland community. An ancestral estate may also exercise remote or disproportionate control over housing, employment, access, farming and development. History can explain how ownership was inherited without settling whether that ownership now serves the public.
Paramount says the drama is about a man standing against “unchecked wealth and power”. The more revealing question will be whether the series applies that scrutiny only to the buyer or also to the laird.
A serious treatment could examine the contradiction directly. Branagh’s character may be defending the land from speculation while maintaining a system in which the surrounding population remains dependent upon one family’s decisions. The billionaire may be a destructive outsider, but the castle’s existing authority need not therefore be benign.
There is also the familiar danger that the Highlands will be presented primarily as an inheritance, battlefield and visual spectacle. International productions have repeatedly drawn on Scotland’s castles, mountains and historical associations because they are immediately recognisable to global audiences. The people living in those landscapes are more easily reduced to servants, retainers, romantic interests or picturesque witnesses.
The creative team gives Laird the capacity to move beyond that. Jez Butterworth has written extensively about land, belonging, inheritance and contested national identity, while Wright has experience directing large period and political dramas. Georgia Lee and John-Henry Butterworth bring substantial television experience to a project intended to sustain a family conflict across a series rather than a single film.
Branagh’s casting will guarantee international attention. It will also place the moral centre of the story inside the castle unless the writers deliberately widen the view.
For Scotland, the most interesting part of Laird will not be whether one rich man defeats another. It will be whether the drama recognises that the glens are neither inherited scenery nor an investment asset. They are places where people live under decisions about land that are often made far from them, sometimes in an American boardroom and sometimes from the castle on the hill.
Sources
Paramount Press Express, “Paramount+ Greenlights New Series Laird with Kenneth Branagh Set to Star and Executive Produce”:
https://www.paramountpressexpress.com/paramount-plus/shows/laird/about/
Scottish Parliament, Land Reform (Scotland) Bill and Act:
https://www.parliament.scot/bills-and-laws/bills/s6/land-reform-scotland-bill
Scottish Land Commission, Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2025:
https://www.landcommission.gov.scot/shaping-land-policy/land-reform-act
Scottish Land Commission, “What is land reform?”:
https://www.landcommission.gov.scot/shaping-land-policy/what-is-land-reform
Registers of Scotland, Country of Origin Report 2025:
https://www.ros.gov.uk/data-and-statistics/property-market-statistics/country-of-origin/country-of-origin-report-2025
Registers of Scotland, Country of Origin Report news release:
https://www.ros.gov.uk/about/news/2026/country-of-origin-report-news-release-march-2025
Screen Scotland, The Economic Value of the Screen Sector in Scotland in 2023:
https://www.screen.scot/funding-and-support/research/the-economic-value-of-the-screen-sector-in-scotland-in-2023
101 Studios, company and production information:
https://101studiosco.com/about_us
