Hot on the heels of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings Of Power, the second-most expensive TV show ever made has just been revealed...
The first season of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power cost a whopping $465 million to produce - not including the $250 million spent to secure the rights to the book for the TV adaptation - which immediately made it the single most expensive season of television ever made.
The first two episodes of the new show debuted on Amazon Prime Video last week (check out our review here), and if you haven't seen them yet, all we'll say is that it the money is very evidently all up there on the screen.
You can check out our interviews with the cast for The Rings of Power right here, too:
Now, just off the back of that show releasing, The Hollywood Reporter has revealed that Amazon Prime Video will also be behind the second most-expensive season of television ever produced.
No, it isn't the season two of The Rings of Power (although we will be very interested to find out how much that will cost), but a completely different show, title Citadel.
The plot of the show is being kept tightly under wraps, with all we know right now is that it will be an action-packed international spy series, with the main series set to star Richard Madden, Priyanka Chopra Jones and Stanley Tucci.
What do we mean by "main series"? Well, it turns out that there will be several "satellite spin-off" shows based around the main Citadel show, all set in different cities around the world.
The show is executive-produced by the Russo Brothers (who were also responsible for Netflix's most-expensive movie to date, the action-packed international spy movie The Gray Man), and the report claims that the seven-episode main series has a production budget that has ballooned to $250 million.
Apparently the reason for this price tag includes Covid-19 production costs, but also some in-house disputes after the initial footage for the episodes was show to the head honchos at Prime Video, and they were reportedly less than impressed. So the Russo Brothers were brought in to have a more hands-on role in some extensive reshoots, which proved to be quite pricey.
There is no set release date for Citadel on Amazon Prime Video, but it seems unlikely we'll see it before 2023.
In the meantime, you can also check out our chats with the Russo Brothers about The Gray Man, right here:
