Prime Video has released the new trailer for its upcoming, star-studded, spy thriller Citadel.
The trailer for the new TV show, which launched at 3pm on March 1, introduces Richard Madden and Priyanka Chopra Jonas’ characters, Nadia Sinh and Mason Kane, across multiple high-octane action sequences. The pair are spies for an elite intelligence agency called Citadel – but eight years ago, Citadel was infiltrated and destroyed, and now the agents are on the run. It’s a classic set up, but if it ain’t broke...
Judging by the trailer, the show will feature all the spy-thriller genre staples: explosions, guns, high-speed skiing down a mountainside and several tumultuous encounters between Chopra Jonas’ and Madden’s characters aboard an Orient Express-style train. It’s also pretty star-studded, with Stanley Tucci and Lesley Manville also among the cast.
“They are top spies… the day we meet them is the day that Citadel falls. It’s brought down by this nefarious new spy syndicate called Manticore,” showrunner Anthony Russo, who helms the series with his brother Joe, says.
Eight years later, the show starts back up again with Mason (Madden). “He’s living this quiet life in Oregon with his wife and his daughter. And he’s no memory of who he was or what his past was.” That is, until Bernard Orlick (Stanley Tucci) knocks on his door.
“[He] needs [Mason’s] help to take down Manticore before they create a new world order. Mason discovers that Nadia is still alive. And the two then journey the world taking down Manticore and unravelling the very dangerous secrets of their past.”
The launch of the English-language Citadel also marks the first stop in an ambitious new universe for Amazon. As the Russo brothers (who have worked on multiple Marvel films) explain, the ultimate goal is to release Citadel series set in multiple different countries, in multiple different languages – telling the story of agents from those countries.
“The concept was an idea that Jen Salke [the head of Amazon Studios] presented to us a few years ago, the notion of telling a story that can be interwoven throughout the world – that would have a flagship show, and then regional shows written, produced and directed by original talent that could interweave with the flagship show,” Joe Russo says.
“We thought that was such a novel idea for a narrative and an amazing way to create a really diverse global community of storytellers, to tell a giant mosaic of the narrative together.”
As might be expected, the show features its fair share of splashy stuntwork – something that Chopra Jonas still bears the marks of.
“I have a scar on my forehead… that’s courtesy of Citadel,” she laughs. “But the stunt team were amazing… Nadia’s character is a badass. She comes from a place of trusting her body and her instincts, and I got to explore a lot of that with the stuff that we did.
“Every time I would read new pages, the stunts would just get bigger and bigger. And it was amazing to me to be able to imagine that, and then walk into set and actually execute it.”
She also loves the idea of Citadel’s international, multi-language rollout.
“It was so exciting to me as someone who worked for a very long time in a non-English medium to see the success of subtitled work in English language territories… that’s so exciting and interesting to me, the cross-pollination of cultures and how entertainment goes beyond borders and language: now, it’s just about storytelling.”
