The adventures of Sisi and Franz will continue.
German period drama series Sisi — a reimagining of the historic love story between 19th century Austrian Empress Elisabeth, nicknamed “Sisi,” and her husband, Emperor Franz — has received a third-season order from German network RTL.
Swiss American actress Dominique Devenport will return as Sisi and Jannik Schümann as Franz for season 3, which Story House Pictures will produce, in collaboration with Beta Film.
Sisi was an out-of-the-gate hit for RTL, which has success both streaming the show on its RTL+ platform and broadcasting it on its flagship linear channel in Germany. Beta has sold the series to more than 100 territories worldwide, including to Mediaset in Italy, TF1 in France and Globoplay in Brazil.
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In the RTL series, Empress Elisabeth is depicted as a tomboy who falls, as a princess in Bavaria, head-over-heels in love with the the handsome and powerful Franz, Emperor of Austria. But once married, Sisi faces the challenges of the royal court, growing into a self-confident, modern and fiercely independent woman and Empress.
Sisi is riding a new wave of interest in the Empress Elizabeth, who first became a pop culture phenomenon with Ernst Marischka’s trilogy of period films in the 1950s, featuring a young Romy Schneider as Sisi. Netflix has also scored a hit with The Empress, another new interpretation of the Sisi tale, with Devrim Lingnau as the titular royal and Philip Froissant as Franz.
Vicky Krieps played a 40-year-old, and very in-your-face, Empress Sisi in Marie Kreutzer’s BAFTA-nominated Corsage, and German auteur Frauke Finsterwalder puts her own spin on the Sisi myth in the upcoming Sisi and I, starring Susanne Wolff (The Stranger in Me) as Sisi and Sandra Hüller of Toni Erdmann fame as her upstaging lady-in-waiting Irma Countess von Sztáray. Sisi and I premieres at the Berlin Film Festival on Sunday in the festival’s Panorama section.
