Munich, 2 May 2006. The event miniseries The Crown Prince ("Kronprinz Rudolf") obtained truly royal ratings in Austria: on 30 April and 1 May, practically every second TV viewer in the country saw the miniseries about the tragedy of Mayerling, one of the great myths of European history. The drama about the life and death of Empress Sisi's only son scored a market share of up to 45%, whereby the number of viewers increased the second evening to almost 1.3 million. The Crown Prince was produced by EOS/MR Film for ORF, ARD Degeto and RAI and is distributed by Beta Film. The ARD will air the 11-million-euro production on 29 December at primetime.  

The Crown Prince was produced in English with a cast of international stars and is the ORF's biggest production of recent years. Director Robert Dornhelm (Oscar nominee for "Children of Theatre Street") just recently celebrated a major success in the US with ABC's miniseries "The Ten Commandments." The Crown Prince features Max von Thun ("Andreas Hofer – Die Freiheit des Adlers"), Klaus Maria Brandauer (Oscar nominee for "Out of Africa"), Vittoria Puccini (star of the Italian telenovela "Elisa di Rivombrosa"), Sandra Ceccarelli ("Light of my Eyes"), Julia Jentsch ("Sophie Scholl – The Final Days"), Joachim Król ("Lautlos"), Alexandra Vandernoot ("The Dinner Game") and Omar Sharif ("Monsieur Ibahim"), who had starred as the Crown Prince alongside Catherine Deneuve in the 1968 screen version of the Mayerling tragedy. The script to The Crown Prince was written by Klaus Lintschinger and Didier Decoin ("Napoleon").

Shot in English, the film has stirred up great interest around the world. Jan Mojto's Beta Film has already sold the rights to The Crown Prince in 15 countries at the international TV Fair MIP TV in Cannes this past April.

With his liberal views, Rudolf (1858-1889) is an outsider in politically conservative Vienna. His father, Emperor Franz-Joseph, keeps him away from government affairs. Rudolf seeks in vain the attention and affection of his mother, the famous Empress Sisi. In order to be able to succeed to his father one day, Rudolf enters into an unhappy marriage of reason with Stephanie of Belgium. Soon, however, he succumbs to the charms of young Baroness Mary Vetsera, who loves him passionately. Franz-Joseph, who does not approve of Rudolf's affair, severs relations with him. Rudolf then plans to overthrow Franz-Joseph; but when this fails, he sees only one way out of his dilemma. Mary finds Rudolf as he plans to commit suicide in Mayerling, the secret meeting place of the two lovers. Although he sends her away, she returns when she realizes what he intends to do...