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Amazon CEO Andy Jassy has demanded answers for why certain shows cost as much as they do, and at the top of the list is the Priyanka Chopra and Richard Madden-starrer Citadel. The spy series had a notoriously difficult production, and debuted earlier this year to poor reviews and middling audience response. But it reportedly cost the company $250 million (more than Rs 2000 crore) to produce.
A new Bloomberg report cites ‘people familiar with the matter’ as saying that Jassy has asked for a detailed budget analysis for Amazon’s big shows, six of which have seemingly underperformed in the last nine months. This comes as Amazon prepares to lay off tens of thousands of employees and jettison projects no longer deemed necessary. In the last few months, Amazon has spent $100 million each on shows such as Daisy Jones & the Six, The Power, Dead Ringers and The Peripheral, none of which cracked the list of the 10 most watched shows in the US, according to Nielsen.
As a part of Amazon’s big-spending new strategy overseen by Amazon Studios chief Jen Salke, the company courted major talent such as Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Jordan Peele and Donald Glover for first-look deals, which haven’t yielded the results they’d have liked. Amazon also has a deal with Priyanka, which hasn’t amounted to much either.
Even Salke’s biggest supporters, the report says, concede that Citadel began as more of a business proposition than a creative project. The first season of Citadel was supposed to cost $20 million per episode, and run for eight episodes. Ultimately, only six were aired. To avoid some of the production hassles of the first season, Joe Russo has been appointed director for each episode of the show’s second season, but he’ll reportedly be paid $25 million for the gig.
In June, Amazon Studios’ head of drama series Odetta Watkins admitted that Citadel needs ‘time to grow’, as the US audience has become ‘jaded’. At an event, she insisted that from her perspective, the show marks a ‘victory’, because it was always intended for a global audience. Amazon designed Citadel as a global franchise. An Italian spinoff has already finished production, while and Indian spinoff, starring Samantha Ruth Prabhu and Varun Dhawan, is currently being shot.
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