Anthony Russo On Building ‘Citadel’ Universe: “We’re Like Jazz Musicians Passing Music Back And Forth”
The Russo Brothers’ are known for their world-building powers, but the Citadel spy universe they’re designing for Amazon MGM Studios marks a new approach altogether. Whereas the Marvel Cinematic Universe was carefully constructed over multiple movies and many years, Citadel has sped up the whole process for a content-hungry streaming world.
Citadel had first emerged as an idea back in 2018/2019, with development beginning in earnest after Amazon’s Jennifer Salke had approached the Russos about a creating an international spyverse. While the MCU and DC universes have decades of material to work from, Citadel would start from scratch.
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There was an 18 month gap after the launch of the first Citadel series, starring Priyanka Chopra Jonas and Richard Madden, but things heat up this month. Citadel: Diana launched yesterday out of Italy, and will quickly be followed by India’s Citadel: Honey Bunny next month. Another season of the big budget original is on its way and it is known there are at least two more Citadel iterations being readied in the shadows — Mexico is one rumor, but at the moment is just that. The Citadel universe is centered around the shadowy spy organizations Citadel and Manticore, both of which are introduced in the first series and further explored in Diana and Honey Bunny.
During an interview with Deadline last week in London, Anthony Russo discussed how the project had come together, and said the collaborative nature of the work had been vital to turning Amazon MGM Studios boss Salke’s early vision into a reality. “This is something Joe and I have understood over the years — working as a team and the experience of collaboration has been very important to us,” he said. “We understand it very intimately.
“It really is dependent on picking the right partners to pull something off collaboratively. Some people are built for it and some people aren’t. If you align yourselves up properly, you can do remarkable things and move at speeds you couldn’t imagine. We love our Italian and Indian partners, and the work they did prior to this. We loved their work, they admired our work and we were very quickly able to establish rapport and a shared vision. It’s like we’re a bunch of jazz musicians passing music back and forth to one another as we’re playing and it’s an incredible thing.”
The Russos’ production house AGBO is the engine behind the various versions, with Diana led by showrunner Gina Gardini, director Arnaldo Catinari, lead writer Alessandro Fabbri and Cattleya execs Riccardo Tozzi, Marco Chimenz and Giovanni Stabilini, and Indian directorial duo DK and Raj and writer Sita R. Menon leading the creative vision on Honey Bunny, which launches November 7.
“At this point, it’s a full love triangle where all the corners are touching,” said David Weil, exec producer for the Citadel universe. “Gina, DK, Raj and Sita are having their own conversations, and we are having ours with everybody.”
Diana, which debuted yesterday, is set in a near-future world where a single undercover agent is trapped behind enemy lines working as a mole within the malignant Manticore. It stars The World According to Lidia P?et star Matilda De Angelis. Honey Bunny acts as an origin story of Chopra Jonas’ character Nadia Sinh, set in the 1990s in the early days of the spy orgs. Detail on the show is currently embargoed, but we know Amazon and AGBO urged creators D.K. and Raj to retain their unique filming style developed in series such as Prime Video India’s Hindi-language thriller series The Family Man, Farzi and Guns and Gulaabs and films such as 99, Happy Ending and A Gentleman.
The Russos’ sister, AGBO Chief Creative Officer Angela Russo-Otstot, and Weil, both architects on the wider universe project, lifted the lid on the inner workings of the collab, noting how information and idea sharing came about through international writers rooms featuring talent from three continents.
“I’ve been in many writers’ rooms, but to have this incredible brains trust you could speak to, email, pitch ideas to and get ideas from inspired our work,” said Weil. “That is very exhilarating. It keeps you on your toes – you’re playing tennis with the best. You’re always trying to up your own game. The only challenge was jetlag and time zones.”
“There were a lot of 7 a.m. meetings,” added Russo-Otstot. She added that developing the universe further would be guided by “listening to the response of each other as collaborators, and where the story feels like it can organically travel to.”
Honey Bunny writer Menon recalled how the “one of a kind,” bi-monthly room developed into a “process of exchange” and added that experiencing “how each territory thinks in terms of crafting their narrative and their cinematic language was such a fascinating experience and so enriching.”
The first Citadel was met with mixed reviews, while Diana been received better overall, and Russo-Otstot is in an optimistic mood looking forwards. “We feel we have achieved so much just from Season 1 of the first series and the two that are now launching,” she said. “That is again informing us on Season 2 of the U.S.-based series, so there is a lot to continue mining there. We will see once we get through this evolution and cycle where we can go.”
Anthony Russo, who along with brother Joe, is directing and co-producing the upcoming Avengers: Doomsday and Avengers: Secret Wars for Marvel, quipped that the plan for the Citadel world was to have a “one series for every country on the planet.” He also paid tribute to his growing team at AGBO to keeping the shop in order when directing jobs took over, saying: “That’s really the key on how we are able to participate in so many different wonderful endeavors. It is impossible to do this stuff without creative partners like David and Angela leading AGBO. Joe and I like to joke that there used to be two Russo brothers, but now there are 34.”
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