You’d think a TV series that cost $300 million would at the very least drum up a decent amount of buzz, but when was the last time you heard anyone mention Prime Video’s Citadel out loud?
The sixth and final episode of its first season only aired on May 26 – and there’s a second run already in development alongside two spin-offs as the terrible-named Citadel SpyVerse begins to take shape – but the show didn’t even manage to crack Nielsen’s Top 10 most-watched rankings even once during its run.
Not only that, but Amazon even blamed audiences being “jaded” as the reason why the globetrotting spy saga had failed to catch on, so deciding to throw even more money at the problem is certainly a choice. Avengers: Endgame director is flying solo to helm the entirety of Citadel‘s second season, with Bloomberg revealing that he’s getting paid the princely sum of $25 million to do so.
When you add that to the six-week event’s initial production costs, a hypothetical budget in the same ballpark, as well as the additional costs for Italy’s Citadel: Diana and the as-yet-untitled Indian offshoot, then Prime Video will have sunk at least half a billion dollars into the franchise with virtually nothing to show for it.
Of course, the Citadel SpyVerse could yet explode in popularity and take its place as the water cooler project of choice one day in the future, but its inauspicious start doesn’t instill much in the way of confidence that it will.