Whether it be an original movie or TV show or a legacy title, historical epics are big business on Netflix, and always have been. And yet, you might be surprised to discover just how popular The Empress was following its debut in September of last year.
The German series that based on the life of the Empress of Austria and Queen of Hungary in the 19th Century spent two weeks as the second most-watched series on the Netflix charts, and ended up as the seventh top-viewed foreign-language show of 2022, amassing well over 150 million viewing hours during its first 28 days on the library.
As a result, the streaming service didn’t waste any time in handing out a Season 2 renewal, with the news being made official just 40 days after The Empress had debuted. Things went fairly silent after that, though, but it’s now been confirmed that cameras are now rolling on what’s sure to be an expansive – and expensive – return to the past to continue telling a fascinating story rooted in real-world history.
If it wasn’t for Dahmer – Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story, then The Empress would have premiered as Netflix’s number one series on a global level, but there’s no shame in losing out to a true crime biographical thriller that cracked the platform’s all-time Top 10 with the greatest of ease.
It may not have seized the zeitgeist in the way the splashiest exclusives do, but it’s right there in the numbers that the sprawling story was comfortably one of the most notable first-run offerings of last year.