Citadel is expanding its universe with Italian and Indian spin-offs Diana and Honey Bunny

Amazon Prime Video’s spy thriller Citadel was a bold move.

It had a reported budget of $US300 million, was led by two actors with global appeal, Priyanka Chopra Jonas and Game of Thrones’ Richard Madden, and had among its producers, Joe and Anthony Russo, who helmed Avengers Infinity War and Endgame.

It’s a formula that adds up to blockbuster. It didn’t quite work out that way. In English-language territories, Citadel failed to blow up the zeitgeist, had a Rotten Tomatoes’ critics score of 51 per cent and an audience assessment of 63 per cent.

In lieu of detailed viewership data which Prime Video does not release, Nielsen’s third-party US streaming ratings is the best publicly available information. On those charts, Citadel didn’t crack the top 10 until its fifth week, and barely.

None of that stopped the streamer nor Citadel’s producers from slowing down. This was always a title that was destined to be an expansive narrative universe. At Citadel’s release 18 months ago, it was confirmed that Italian and Indian spin-offs were in the works.

The Italian one, Citadel: Diana, will premiere on Thursday while the Indian chapter, Citadel: Honey Bunny, will debut on November 7. A second season of the original series was announced before the release of the first, and that’s in production now.

Citadel is an example of streaming companies’ global ambitions where a US series doesn’t live or die by whether Americans, Australians, Brits, Canadians and Kiwis fawned over it. The original Citadel series was dubbed into 29 other languages including several dialects spoken in India, and subtitled into even more.

Showrunner David Weil told The Nightly it was “exciting to see how strongly it performed in India, and clearly with many thanks to our beautiful star, Priyanka Chopra”.

India is a key territory for Prime Video and estimates from The Indian Times puts its subscribers there in the 20 million ballpark.

In March, Mike Hopkins, senior vice president, Prime Video and Amazon Studios, told a media event in Mumbai that India has the highest number of Prime sign-ups outside of the US and those that do are primarily there for its streaming service rather than the delivery and shopping offers.

Citadel producer Angela Russo-Otstot emphasised the significance of programming for an international market. She said, “We learned a lot of lessons about how powerful the storytelling was in the first season to a global audience.

“The international audience really showed up in an exciting manner, and that bolstered our attention toward the Italian series and the Indian series, knowing that they would both bring an incredible, culturally specific homage to their own cinematic histories within their countries.”

Citadel: Honey Bunny was created and directed by Raj & DK, Indian filmmakers who have already worked with Prime on shows The Family Man and Farzi. Their corner of the Citadel universe is faster-paced and scrappier than the slick original. Honey Bunny is set in the 1990s and explores the genesis of the spy agency at the centre of the stories.

The Italian one, Diana, is closer to the tone of the original series and follows a young Citadel agent who is undercover at its villainous counterpart, Manticore. Diana was created by Alessandro Fabbri while Gina Gardini is the showrunner.

Russo-Otstot said they wanted each spin-off to sit within their own visions and vibes which meant the producing team was able to “lean back creatively” while keeping an eye on the connective story tissue between the shows.

Anthony Russo added, “We trust the collaboration. These are artists that we specifically chose to work with because we admire what they do and how they do it.”

He likened the experience to how jazz musicians work, “You’re passing ideas back and forth to one another, and you’re picking it up and running with it.

“Season one was the inspiration point for Citadel: Diana and Citadel: Honey Bunny. Then those shows figure out that if that’s the starting point and that’s the narrative world we live in, and the stylistic world that we live in, how can we interpret that in a way that’s organic to characters that we want to explore and the settings we want to put them in.

“There is a looseness to it and there is a trust to it.”

When the Russo brothers had those first conversations with Prime Video about a global spy show, it was pre-pandemic and at the height of the commercial prowess of Marvel Studios, which the filmmakers have worked in and will be returning to with the next two Avengers movies.

Citadel’s spin-offs are coming out in a very different pop cultural environment. Appetites for shared narrative universes have waned, audiences exhausted by the complex threads that tie one property to three others.

Russo-Otstot explained the team has been thoughtful about how to expand the Citadel universe without overwhelming viewers.

“It’s important that each expression can be its own enjoyable experience,” she said. “Should they choose to watch others, they will have a far more additive experience but we agree, we don’t want people to feel they have to do homework.

“We want them to have any possible entry point that makes sense for them.

“Each of these stories welcome a brand new audience in a manner where they will enjoy the stories for what they are.”

Citadel: Diana is streaming on Prime Video from October 10, Citadel: Honey Bunny is released on November 7