The Witcher details before its Netflix release
Carolina
Argentinian Carolina has an extensive movie background in the cinematic universe. She is our resident TV analyst and a seasoned expert in global streaming platforms. She showcases her comprehensive knowledge through her love for Netflix 'Originals', Frozen, The Good Place, and The Dragon Prince.
The Witcher is the new Netflix Original series set to storm the world.
But there are many unanswered questions about the show.
In this guide you’ll discover all the details about the coming series and get a better understanding of what it’s all about.
You’ll also learn if it’s a show for you.
According to experts, The Witcher will be the next Game of Thrones, and judging by what we have already seen in trailers and teasers, maybe it could surpass it.
Veteran journalist Rick Marshall of DigitalTrends said this:
“The trailer debuted to widespread acclaim from fans of the Witcher books and the video game series, with particular praise for short glimpses of the show’s fight choreography.”
Netflix has been very secretive about the release date, but we finally know it’ll be coming to your favourite streaming service on December 20th, 2019.
So mark that date in your diary.
In the meantime, scroll below to find out everything you need to know to get yourself excited for the upcoming winter phenomenon.
What’s The Witcher about?
The Witcher gained popularity thanks to the video game saga of the same name, which is based on the book saga by Andrzej Sapkowski.
People often assume that the series is going to follow the video games story, but instead, it will adapt the novels.
The story follows Geralt of Rivia, the Witcher, who is a monster slayer with supernatural abilities he developed when he was a child that made him able to fight wild beasts and monsters.
Both in the books and games, Geralt protects and trains Ciri, a princess of a recently conquered country, who is used as a pawn of international politics.
About the Author
Andrzej Sapkowski is a Polish fantasy author, famous for having written The Witcher saga which has been translated into 20 languages.
He studied economics and worked as a sales representative.
Before working exclusively as a writer, he was a translator focused on science fiction.
Sapkowski began The Witcher saga as a short story he sent to a contest in the Polish science fiction and fantasy magazine, Fantastyka, gaining him the 3rd prize.
The short story was published in the magazine in 1986, and it was a massive success between both readers and critics.
After this, Sapkowski wrote three collections of short stories set on The Witcher universe and five novels.
This saga, along with his other works made him one of the most famous Polish fantasy writers in the 1990’s.
The Books
The book saga is comprised of a collection of short stories compiled in three volumes. A five-book novel adventure, and a stand-alone novel called Season of Storms.
All the books have been translated into 20 languages, including Spanish, French, Italian, English, and Portuguese.
Even though the short stories have Geralt of Rivia as the main character, some of them are just set in the universe and expand it.
The book saga focuses exclusively on Geralt and Ciri, and how he trained her to become a witcher at the same time protecting her.
The Video Games
When CD Projekt Red, a Polish video game developer, publisher, and distributor, offered Andrzej Sapkowski to buy the rights of the books to make the video game, Sapkowski sold them for a meager price, thinking the game was going to be a failure.
The first video game called The Witcher was released in 2007 by CD Projekt Red, and it became a big success in Poland and the rest of the world.
The Witcher is a role-playing action game, and it’s available for both Microsoft Windows and OS X.
The game is based on the novels and follows Geralt of Rivia in his adventures.
Using BioWare’s Aurora Engine, the game has three different paths that affect the games’ storyline.
An interesting fact is most of the choices the player has to make are moral decisions that end affecting how the story develops.
CD Projekt Red made two more games after the success of the first one: The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings and The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt.
According to the developers, the third game is the last one in the saga.
Who’s the series’ showrunner?
Netflix never leaves its original series in the hands of a stranger. The Witcher is not an exception.
Lauren Schmidt Hissrich is the showrunner of the series. She’s an American producer and screenwriter with an important portfolio on her hands.
Lauren was the co-executive producer of The Umbrella Academy, another successful Netflix original series.
She was also the co-producer of The Defenders, a Marvel crossover series made for Netflix where Jessica Jones, Daredevil, Luke Cage and Iron Fist join forces to fight crime.
She was also the producer of Daredevil, the Marvel series for Netflix.
Besides her producer duties, she’s a writer who has been in charge or writing two episodes of The Umbrella Academy, the whole The Defenders mini-series, some episodes of Daredevil, and the entire The Witcher series.
Netflix release
In the beginning, Netflix’s original plan was to make a movie based on the book saga but adapting eight books in a single film was insane, so they changed their minds and decided to produce a series.
The project was announced in May 2017.
The first season will have eight episodes, and Herny Cavill will be in the shoes of Geralt of Rivia.
Check out the official trailer below:
The whole season has been shot in Central Europe, and Andrzej Sapkowski has been a creative consultant on the series development.
Netflix released the first teaser of the series at the San Diego Comic-Con, on July 19 2019, and the trailer is slated to be released on October.
Netflix hastily denied it a December 14th release but in the weeks following the December 20th was confirmed.
In Summary
The Witcher TV series is coming to your screen very soon on Netflix and is likely to fill the void Game of Thrones left a couple of months ago.
Based on the popular fantasy book saga by Polish writer Andrzej Sapkowski, The Witcher has all the elements to seduce lovers of high fantasy stories like Game of Thrones and Lord of the Rings.
Now, we only need to wait for Netflix to release the show and be prepared for this whole new medieval experience.
In the meantime, you can take a look at the books or give the games a try to learn more about Geralt of Rivia and his life as a witcher.
Have you got any other interesting The Witcher facts? I would love to hear them, so drop me a message in the comments section below.
