Third season of “Capitani” is in progress

The Luxembourg production company Samsa Film has been filming its new series “Marginal” since the beginning of March. The production, directed by Loïc Tanson and based on an idea by screenwriter Frédéric Zeimet, will be broadcast on RTL during 2025.

But other series are also being prepared in the Samsa offices. Two thriller productions are currently in progress. The former is named “Lazarus”. The producer Bernard Michaux is behind it. The second is called “Am Déiwen Däischteren”. Eric Lamhène’s series focuses on a female duo who must help each other to unmask a murderer who is wreaking havoc in the Moselle region and its vineyards. These two filmings are currently scheduled for 2025.

Financing and broadcasters

However, the most interesting news from Samsa Film is undoubtedly that the flagship series “Capitani” is to receive a third season. “The ‘Capitani’ file was taken out of the drawer in which it was stored today,” it was said during a recent visit to the set of “Marginal”. Thierry Faber, the showrunner of the “Capitani” series, which he created in 2015, has been working on the third season since January.

So far, no application for financial aid has been forwarded to the Film Fund Luxembourg (this is likely to be the case in the next few months) and it is even rumored that RTL, the broadcaster of the first two seasons, does not yet officially know everything. This led Samsa Film to say that they “cannot yet say that there will be this third season”.

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However, it’s hard to imagine that RTL wouldn’t be interested in new episodes of a program that was a hit on the channel. The first season of “Capitani” attracted 158,000 people ages 16 and older (29% of the 16-plus population), according to the press release at the time. While the second season did even better with a total of 232,000 viewers (44% of the population aged 16 and over). These figures were determined through studies by TNS Ilres, as ratings in Luxembourg (unlike neighboring countries) are not calculated.

40 million streams?

The success of the Christophe Wagner-directed series on Netflix is ​​difficult to quantify. The American platform on which the first two seasons were broadcast keeps its communications strictly secret and shares very few figures with the general public.

However, there is evidence that “Capitani” has reached between 10 and 12 million streams in 2023. This is despite the fact that the first season was released on the platform in February 2021 and the second season in July 2022. This suggests that Samsa Film’s production must have reached at least 30 million streams in total. Probably closer to 40 million. This would of course make it the most watched Luxembourg television property in the world.

Filming in 2025 or 2026?

Coming back to the third season, only a few had the opportunity to take a look at the plot. So not much is known except that there will be a reunion with the hero couple from the first two seasons, namely Luc Capitani (played by Luc Schiltz) and Elsa Ley (Sophie Mousel). The two of them have gotten a little older since the end of the second season – which mainly took place in the train station district – and have therefore developed further in life. Of course, they will have to work together again to solve a crime.

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Samsa Film is currently talking about a possible shooting date of “2025 or even 2026”. And if you take a look at the production time of the previous seasons, you would think that you have to plan at least two years of work before you can hope to see “Capitani” on the TV screen again…

This text originally appeared at Comma. Translation and editing: Nora Schloesser.