How Joe Russo turned Citadel from a business plan into a TV series

Citadel is Amazon’s latest original show, a splashy spy series that cost an estimated $300 million to make. It’s produced by, among other people, Joe and Anthony Russo, who you may know as the people behind Avengers: Infinity War and Endgame.

Those are two of the most popular movies of all time, so people are expecting a lot from Citadel. So far, critical reaction has been pretty meh. The show, about a pair of super-spies played by Richard Madden and Priyanka Chopra Jonas, feels paint-by-numbers so far, although perhaps the remaining three episodes left in the first season will turn things around. And when you hear about how the series came about, maybe the complaints were inevitable.

“Well, it was one of the more ambitious concepts we’d ever heard,” Joe Russo told The Mary Sue. “It was pitched to us by Jen Salke who runs Amazon Prime. And she had an idea where she said, ‘look, I wanna build a US language show that then can spin off into regional versions of the show told by artists in those regions in their language. Can you come up with an idea that would work for people around the world to play in the same sandbox together?’”

"One, I was like, that’s an incredible idea because stories are one of the last things that still bind all of us together in a very divisive world. And two, she’s championing diversity in an incredible way, in a way that very few people have honestly in this business. So, we said hell yes, and got to work thinking about what kind of story would make the most sense. And we settled on the spy world as having being the most fertile ground for that kind of concept."

When are new episodes of Citadel released?

It’s true that Amazon is already developing a number of Citadel spinoffs; four to be exact, each set in a different country — India, Italy, Spain and Mexico — and shot in the native language.

Now, Russo frames this idea as being about diversity and the communal power of stories, but there’s another way to interpret it, and it goes something like this:

"The chief executive at Amazon Studios wanted a show that would be popular with a broad audience and that would lead to spinoffs that would make inroads in other markets around the world. She didn’t care what the show was about so long as it was successful on a large scale."

Basically, it sounds like Amazon made a business plan first and then came up with the idea for a TV show second, which doesn’t sit well with me, especially when the producers are framing it as a creative opportunity, and when the show itself is kinda whatever.

But far be it for me to poop on Amazon’s party. Maybe Citadel will give everyone everything they want. New episodes drop on Fridays on Amazon Prime Video.

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