Amazon spends huge sums of money to get film and series fans excited about the streaming offshoot Amazon Prime with expensive in-house productions. However, the results are not always convincing. An expensive series in particular falls massively short of expectations.
Version:1.0.122
Languages: German, English
Release:28.08.2017
Citadel: No viewers and bad reviews
Have you ever heard of Citadel? The agent series in the style of Mission: Impossible or James Bond was released by Amazon produced for a staggering $250 million and ran from April 2023 on a weekly basis on Amazon Prime.
Despite a large-scale advertising campaign, the expensive series could only reach a small audience – at least in the USA. According to Nielsen Media Research, a market research company, since its release, Citadel not once in the top 10 most popular streaming series (Those: Variety).
You can watch the official trailer for Citadel here:
Citadel on Amazon Prime Video (Trailer)
To make matters worse, Citadel was also received by the press in a rather mixed way. The series holds up on Metacritic a score of 51 percent.
Pretty bitter! Especially since the agent series is the starting signal for a series universe of its own. Season 2 is already in production and a spin-off (Citadel: Diana) is also planned for release.
However, this failure already has consequences. The news agency Bloomberg reports, for example, that the responsible boss at Amazon in the future detailed budget analysis wants to see on his desk. No wonder, after all, Amazon gives around seven billion US dollars per year for in-house productions.
Have series and films become too expensive?
But Amazon is not alone with this flop. Even with the competition, it cracks enormously. The superhero film The Flash is expected to make Warner Bros. lose $200 million, while Disney’s Elemental was also a multi-million dollar box office flop.
And it goes even further: Dreamworks reported with Ruby dives a total financial loss:
Don’t want to miss any more news about technology, games and pop culture? No current tests and guides? Then follow us on Facebook or Twitter.