Netflix has reportedly agreed a $500 million deal for a prequel to The Crown, that will follow the British royal family following the death of Queen Victoria.
The new series will once again written by The Crown mastermind Peter Morgan, The Telegraph has stated, and will dramatize the five decades from the end of the Victorian era in 1901.
While not yet confirmed by Netflix itself, the project has reportedly been in talks for some time, and would be a major new investment believed to run for multiple seasons. Indeed, the series is expected to end with the wedding of Princess (later Queen) Elizabeth in 1947 — the event which kickstarted Season 1 of the original show.
The Crown ran for six seasons on Netflix and garnered critical acclaim, particularly for its earlier years — before the show began to catch up with the present day and deal with some of the Royals’ more messy modern affairs.
Morgan has previously said it would be “too soon” to dramatize even more recent events — such as the death of Queen Elizabeth II and coronation of King Charles III — but was interested in telling more of the royal family’s history.
“For the time being, I cannot imagine any circumstances in which I’d want to go further into the present, as it were, but at the same time, I don’t think I’m done with the subject,” Morgan said previously. “I might find some way of coming into it from a different way. If you go back in time, you always have that wonderful opportunity for metaphor. You can find a story in the past and tell that, and it [will] actually be a story about the present, but in camouflage. And that, I think, might be a more elegant way forward.”
“The Crown’s sixth and final season coasts on the prowess of its cast, leaning so hard into its leads’ strengths that it often neglects to make its other elements interesting,” we wrote in IGN’s The Crown Season 6 review, rating its last run of episodes with a 5/10.
Tom Phillips is IGN’s News Editor. You can reach Tom at tom_phillips@ign.com or find him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social
