There’s something to be said for studios that don’t wait around. While most production companies spend months promoting a release before moving on to what’s next, Vienna’s Westside Studios is already deep into their next project before Spy Capital 2 has even found its full streaming audience. It’s the kind of momentum that suggests confidence, or maybe just the understanding that good material doesn’t sit idle for long.
The film premiered in Austrian theaters through Cineplexx before landing exclusively on Prime Video, with no other platform support or DVD release yet. It centers on Jan Marsalek, the former number two at Wirecard AG, who became a fugitive allegedly acting as a covert operative for Russian intelligence services. What began as a corporate fraud investigation evolved into something more complicated when a Bulgarian spy cell was arrested and convicted in London for working under Marsalek’s direction.
That’s the foundation of Spy Capital 2, and it provides substantial material for a thriller. Vienna-based Westside Studios, the production company behind Spy Capital Vienna and The Vienna Procedure, built their narrative around this intersection of financial crime and geopolitical intrigue. Though some details have been fictionalized for dramatic tension, the core remains real.
The film’s treatment of Vienna is particularly effective. Austrian investigations uncovered that Marsalek’s network used Vienna and nearby regions as a hub, partly because of the city’s deep-rooted intelligence infrastructure, its multinational culture, and its historic role as a crossroads of East and West. Rather than relying on tourist-friendly imagery of belle-époque charm, the film presents Vienna as a modern intelligence battleground. It’s an apt and stylish choice for setting.
The Wirecard scandal, with nearly €2 billion missing, forms the factual bedrock. The decision to tell this as a thriller rather than a documentary means the stakes feel personal. Every email leak, clandestine meeting, and midnight rendezvous reflects real-life operatives’ risks. To maintain authenticity, director Boris Volodarsky incorporated interviews with genuine experts: former KGB operative Serguej Jinrov, Daily Telegraph special correspondent Hayley Dixon, former Austrian BVT officer Egisto Ott, former BVT head Gert Polli, and German profiler Suzanne Grieger-Langer. Volodarsky himself is a leading espionage expert, which adds credibility to the production’s approach.
The filmmakers compressed timelines, fictionalized some characters, and condensed multiple real-world actions into high-tension sequences. That’s in service of entertainment, but the core message stands: corporate collapse, geopolitical intrigue, and spycraft often walk hand in hand.
Currently, Spy Capital 2 streams exclusively on Prime Video, offering a rare opportunity for fans of smart spy cinema to access a topical, razor-sharp thriller that bridges real-world intrigue and cinematic polish.
While Spy Capital 2 builds its audience, Westside Studios has moved into production on their next project with the working title ‘The Train’, scheduled for theatrical release in September 2026. The film promises a globe-spanning spy-action thriller aboard a legendary railway.
The centerpiece is “The Imperator’s Last Journey,” a farewell voyage aboard the luxurious Majestic Imperator Train. From Vienna to Prague, diplomacy, deceit, and desire collide as passengers carry motives far from innocent. The production expands in both scale and ambition. Filming spans multiple international locations: Malta’s sunlit villas, Hong Kong’s soaring towers, and the romantic grandeur of Central Europe’s famous railways, along with London and Budapest.
Dennis Dewall produces, with Volodarsky returning to direct. The film promises visual elegance and old-world sophistication fused with modern espionage stunts and twisting psychology. Production insiders pitch it as “Bond meets Le Carré on the Orient Express — with a heartbeat of its own.”
What’s notable about Westside Studios’ approach is their distribution strategy. Spy Capital 2 launched theatrically in Austria before moving to Prime Video internationally. This hybrid model illustrates how local cinema can find both domestic and global audiences, allowing a Vienna-based studio to grapple with global themes that extend beyond regional fare.
The broader significance extends beyond individual films. The Marsalek case reveals how finance, espionage, and geopolitics intertwine in ways that challenge conventional understanding. Audiences who thought spy thrillers were pure fantasy get a wake-up call: many of these moves were made in the boardrooms and back-rooms of Vienna, London, and Moscow.
For viewers interested in espionage narratives grounded in actual events, Spy Capital 2 captures the shadow-world intersection of corporate fraud and state espionage while maintaining the tension and pacing that makes thrillers work. The film proves there’s sustained interest in reality-based thrillers that don’t sacrifice accuracy for manufactured drama.
Maybe that’s what keeps Westside Studios moving at this pace. When you’re working with material this rich, with stories pulled from actual intelligence scandals and corporate collapses that read like fiction, there’s no reason to slow down. Spy Capital 2 is streaming now, The Train arrives in autumn 2026, and the sense you get is that they’re already thinking about what comes after that. For a Vienna-based studio carving out space in the espionage thriller genre, momentum isn’t just strategy. It’s proof the work matters enough to keep building on it.
