Eternally beautiful, eternally tragic, the Empress Elisabeth of Austria, Sisi, continues to fascinate, over a hundred years after her death. And now the story of this groundbreaking royal is to hit TV screens in a new production.
The new version will be an adaptation of the successful novels based on the empress by Allison Pataki. ‘The Accidental Empress’ and ‘Sisi: Empress on Her Own’ will be brought to the screen by Picture Perfect Federation and Federation Entertainment and it’s hoped they will be shown on international channels, retelling this romantic and tragic story for a new audience.
This adaptation is reported to focus on Sisi’s capabilities and ambitions and is being billed as a drama driven by its female characters. Patrick Wachsberger of Picture Perfect Federation said ”Sisi was a woman ahead of her time and…made her mark with dignity”.
The story of the Empress Elisabeth has been told before, most famously in the trilogy of films starring Romy Schneider, but this will be the first TV production in over a decade. Producers say they hope to bring a big name cast to the show.
Sisi was Empress of Austria for 44 years. Born Elisabeth Amalie Eugenie in 1837, at the age of fifteen she accompanied her mother and older sister on a visit designed to lead to her sibling’s engagement to Franz Josef, Emperor of Austria but he, instead, fell in love with Elisabeth and they married in 1854. Sisi became renowned for her beauty and sense of style as well as her interest in charity and good works. However, she also suffered from depression and when her only son, Rudolf, was found dead alongside his young lover, she never recovered. Sisi was assassinated in 1898.
Allison Pataki’s novels on the empress were first published in 2015 and 2016 and followed her earlier hits set in the American Revolution and the French Revolution.
