It’s fitting that Joe and Anthony Russo were pinpointed as being one of the major reasons behind the budget for Prime Video’s bungled spy series Citadel spiraling to a mind-blowing $300 million, because that’s the sort of figures the duo had become accustomed to working with during their stint as part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Never in a million years should six episodes of television cost the same as Avengers: Infinity War, but that’s exactly what ended up happening. It’s been a huge boon for the Russos in another way, too, seeing as Joe has been handed a bumper paycheck of $25 million to direct the entirety of the already-announced season 2.
There are also two spin-offs coming down the pipeline as well, with Italy’s Citadel: Diana dropping its first teaser at the end of the main show’s finale, so Amazon is evidently going all-in despite the fact the project never once managed to crack Nielsen’s streaming ratings over the course of its six-week run on the airwaves.
Plowing ahead regardless, there’s going to be plenty of time for Citadel to actually cultivate an audience for the first time in its existence after it was noted that the follow-up has been pushed all the way back to either late 2024 or early 2025 as a result of the ongoing writers’ strike and impending action from actors.
Having already invested what’s fast creeping up on half a billion dollars so far with nothing to show for it, if Citadel fails to catch fire when it returns, it’ll be deserving of a status as one of the biggest flops of all-time across the entire entertainment industry.