‘Citadel’ Is a $300 Million Disaster for Amazon

Executive-produced by the Russo brothers, this globe-trotting spy thriller stars Richard Madden and Priyanka Chopra Jonas. Too bad it’s so bland. Imagine for a moment that in the late 2000s, Marvel did not simply announce a movie about Iron Man, but that they would simultaneously go into production on Captain America, Thor, and Avengers films, with even more in immediate development, and that these would be among the most expensive movies ever made. In hindsight, we know this would have worked out well. (Well, maybe not the expense part.) But at the time, no one knew that audiences would be interested in any of these films, let alone that they would kick off the most influential pop-culture brand of the century. If Iron Man had flopped while so many of these other projects were in the works, Marvel might have ceased to exist as a company.

Amazon’s overall business model is in no danger, as its Prime Video streaming service is basically a rounding error for what’s primarily an online megastore. Nonetheless, the people behind Prime have very much put the franchise cart before the individual series horse with the new spy thriller Citadel, which even boasts some MCU blood in the form of executive producers Joe and Anthony Russo.