Never ones to shy away from tackling ambitious, multi-stranded epic narratives, The Avengers: Endgame duo of Joe and Anthony Russo also appear to be in the habit of spending as much of your streaming subscription dollars as possible, with the news that the budget for their Amazon spy series Citadel has ballooned to over $200 million, becoming the second most-expensive TV show behind The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power.
Announced in 2020, Citadel was set to be a kind of Avengers Assemble for this newly created world of global espionage, that would feature a main U.S. strand starring Priyanka Chopra (Quantico) and Richard Madden (Bodyguard), which was filmed in 2021, as well as interconnected local productions from India, Italy and Mexico.
However, The Hollywood Reporter have now revealed that cost overruns and creative differences have led to the departure of half of the creative team behind Citadel, including writer Josh Appelbaum (Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol) and director Brian Kirk (Game of Thrones), who had helmed five of the first seasons seven-episode run.
According to THR, sources weren’t too impressed with the early footage, and that the Russo Bros., whose focus had shifted towards their other $250M streaming project The Gray Man over at Netflix, were brought back into the fold, bringing with them a different creative vision that caused factions within the production.
As for the current situation with Citadel, $75M worth of reshoots took place during the summer with The Russo’s AGBO Studios in charge. Thomas Sigel, who worked with the brothers on Tom Holland Apple vehicle Cherry, and who helmed the other two episodes of season one, worked with writer David Weil (Hunters) in order to try and ‘give it more grounding’.
Currently in post-production, there is no release date for Citadel.
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