Amazon has a big spy series in the works, expanding the universe it established in Citadel, its big-budget 2023 series.
The next in the line-up is Italian-language Citadel: Diana, which will tell a completely fresh story when it arrives on 10 October, and will have little overlap with the main series, other than the fact that it'll involve the mysterious Citadel agency.
Diana herself is played by Matilda De Angelis, who's been making quite a name for herself in Italian productions, and looks suitably big-budget and high-concept, fusing the same sci-fi aesthetic as the first season of Citadel did.
That show starred Richard Madden and Priyanka Chopra as ex-agents who had their minds wiped but find themselves thrust back into the action rather suddently, and appeared to be something of a disappointment in terms of critical reception. That hasn't stopped Amazon forging ahead with the franchise, though, as evidenced by Diana.
The spin-off series will be set in 2030, so we're talking about a near-future setting here rather than one with distant and imagined tech. It'll be based in Milan, where Diana will be eking out an existence as a long-undercover Citadel agent struggling to stay afloat after the agency's destruction by Manticore.
She'll seemingly end up infiltrating Manticore itself, another secretive society, in the hopes of tunnelling her way out of trouble, although the show's first teaser trailer indicates that things won't be that simple. There are glimpses of action and intrigue alike, and you can clearly see that Amazon has thrown quite a big budget at its production.
This isn't the only Citadel series in the works at the moment, either – Amazon also has an Indian production called Citadel: Honey Bunny coming, apparently, which will similarly tell a disconnected story in the Citadel world when it's ready for release.
The idea on Amazon's behalf is clearly to offer an interconnected set of series as a way of selling itself to customers as the best streaming service on the market right now, so it'll be interesting to see if Citadel: Diana can help it fight back after the lacklustre performance of Citadel itself.
