Disney+ Cancels Original German Series Sultan City Amid Creative Differences

Disney+ has quietly opted not to move forward with the original German-produced series Sultan City.

Broadcast is reporting the relationship between the streamer and Berlin-based Two Moons was a positive one “but the parties had different creative visions for the project and the decision was made not to go forward. Though sources cited inflated production costs as proving an issue, it was not a financial decision by Disney to halt the series.”

Sultan City was written by Ipek Zübert and showrunners Ayla Gottschlich and Aysel Yilmaz. It told the darkly comic story of a respectable matriarch of a German-Turkish family who accidentally becomes the head of a criminal underworld and discovers she and her daughters have a talent for the business.? 

The show was one of a slate of ten European original series announced by the streamer in 2021, along with Italy’s The Good Mothers and the comedy Boris,  Germany’s biopic Sam – A Saxon and French dramas Parallels and Oussekine along with the biopic Soprano: Sing Or Die.

Disney+ has continued to announce new original European projects, including the German supernatural drama Pauline, which comes from Sebastian Colley and Philipp Käßbohrer and Matthias Murmann, who are also the writer and executive producers of Netflix’s How to Sell Drugs Online (Fast).  

The company has also recently ordered the Karl Lagerfeld biopic Kaiser Karl and an adaptation of the Annette Hesse novel German House.