MOVIE NEWS – The decision has been described by Peter Morgan, the creator of the award-winning show: The Crown, as a ‘mark of respect’ for Queen Elizabeth II.

II. Due to the death of Queen Elizabeth, the filming of the new series of the Netflix drama The Crown has been stopped. Peter Morgan’s award-winning series, which dramatizes the life of the British monarchy, was filming its fifth season when the Queen’s death was announced.

“The Crown is a love letter to him, and for now I have nothing to add, just silence and respect. We are expected to stop filming out of respect,” he told the Deadline news portal. (This was later confirmed by a Netflix source.) This follows comments from one of the drama’s producers, Stephen Daldry, in 2016 that the series had plans for the monarch’s death.

“None of us knows when that time will come, but it would be right and proper to pay our respects to the Queen,” Daldry said. “It would be a simple tribute and a sign of respect. He’s a global figure and that’s what we had to do”.

The fifth season of The Crown is set in the early to mid-1990s and features an all-new cast, including Imelda Staunton as the Queen, Dominic West as Prince Charles and Elizabeth Debicki as Diana, Princess of Wales. This is the second casting change for the series, which featured Claire Foy as the young version of the Empress in the first two series, and was recast by Olivia Colman for the third and fourth seasons.

The fifth series was announced as the final series of the critically acclaimed series, despite Morgan originally planning it as a six-part series. At the time, he said the show – which was watched by more than 73 million households worldwide – was to end: “I originally thought The Crown would run for six seasons, but now that we’ve started working on the stories for season five, it became clear to me that this was the perfect time and place to end it. I am grateful to Netflix and Sony for supporting me in this decision.”