Maxance Vincent
The first trailer for Amazon’s new series, Citadel, has been released online. The streaming service is betting big on the show, which will launch a shared universe of international spinoffs. As of this writing, Italian, Mexican, and Indian spinoff shows are currently in production, with a Spanish one also in the works. The show will star Priyanka Chopra Jonas, Richard Madden, Stanley Tucci, and Lesley Manville.
Created by Josh Applebaum and Bryan Oh, the show has been produced by Anthony Russo and Joe Russo. During a virtual press conference that celebrated the trailer’s launch, Joe Russo expressed his excitement for the concept, stating that “is a unique television event, and I think that’s what excites Anthony and me the most about it. The concept was an idea that Jen Salke presented to us a few years ago.
The notion of telling a story that could be interwoven throughout the world. It would have a flagship show and then regional shows written, produced and directed by regional talent that could interweave with the flagship show. And we thought that was a novel idea for a narrative and an amazing way to create a diverse global community of storytellers to tell a giant narrative mosaic together. And after our work on the Marvel films and spending so much time traveling the globe, this idea was exciting to Anthony and I and ignitable for us. It seemed like an incredible challenge.”
Anthony Russo said he “had never heard a premise like this before. It’s a real credit to Jen Salke’s vision for what Amazon was capable of. She would bring us an idea, basically a model, for a show that was so ambitious and wide-ranging and so global in its nature. This is something Joe and I have been working toward for many years now. As storytellers, we love the engagement of the global film community. It’s an incredible opportunity, and we went to work trying to find the right story that could sort of fulfill that ambition. We’ve had amazing collaborators in order to find that.”
Executive produced David Weil described the series as “a story of two top spies. There’s Mason Kane, played by Richard Madden, and Nadia Singh, played by Priyanka Chopra Jonas. They are top spies in the most powerful spy organization you’ve never heard of: Citadel. That’s, of course, by design. The day we meet them is the day that Citadel falls. It’s brought down by this nefarious new spy syndicate called Manticore.
We then cut eight years later. We pick up with Mason Kane, he’s living this quiet life in Oregon with his wife and his daughter. And he has no memory of who he was or what his past was. Until one night, there’s a gentlemen by the name Bernard Orlick, played by the one and only Stanley Tucci, who knocks at his door and needs his help to take down Manticore before they create a new world order. Mason discovers that Nadia’s still alive and the two of them journey the world taking down Manticore and unraveling the very dangerous secrets of their past.”
Chopra Jonas explained that “the show has so many layers and complexities and there’s a word that we used from the beginning, which was duality for every character. What you see is what you don’t get. Don’t believe what you see. Everything is just conceptually crazy. And it’s just so exciting to be able to share it with the world because it’s been a long time in the making because it’s so ambitious. And I’m very excited about it.”
Madden teased that the show has “huge set pieces in this, and that’s amazing to be part of. Oftentimes, we see shows that are 80 percent drama, 20 percent action, or vice versa. And this show aimed to be 100 percent of both. I think that’s what we’ve managed to pull off, because in the middle of these huge sequences with explosions and cars blowing up and all of that, we have this intimate drama between these two characters and how they dance together. That what was so exciting about these huge action pieces was that they are infused with heart and drama and storytelling. We get to see a lot about these characters, and how they physically interact, not just great action sequences, but there’s drama at the heart of each one of them.”
You can watch the trailer below and see the first two episodes of the show on April 28th:
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