Word arrived yesterday via Twitter that The Witcher Netflix TV Series that was announced in May 2017 is progressing towards early production with a Pilot Script being completed.
Series creator and writer Lauren Schmidt Hissrich announced the news via her personal Twitter yesterday afternoon Irish time. Hissrich, confirmed as the series helm in December 2017, has in the past written episodes for The West Wing and Justice, and most notably in the fantasy realm has written for and produced Daredevil and The Defenders, both on Netflix.
The TV series will be based heavily on the book series written by Andrzej Sapkowski, who also acts as Creative Consultant on the show.
Sapkowski, who wrote the books on which the game is based, originally studied economics and then worked as a sales assistant in his native Poland. He wrote his first short story “The Witcher” in 1986 to enter in a local magazines short story competition, where he placed 3rd. Spurred on by this, and the positive critical reception to the story, he carried on writing, publishing to date 3 collections of short stories and 5 novels based in The Witcher universe, and featuring a lot of the characters from the game. He is the recipient of many National and International writing awards, most notably a “European Grand Master” honourary award from the European Science Fiction Society, and a Silver Medal Gloria Artis from the Ministry of Culture and Natural Heritage of Poland.
Fans of the game series were not endeared to Sapkowski however, when he apparently questioned the suitability of Video games as a story telling medium.
The Witcher game franchise, again based on Sapkowski’s work, was developed by CD Projekt Red, and comprised of 3 titles, The Witcher – 2007, The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings – 2011, and The Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt – 2015. All three games were massive commercial and critical successes for the studio, with their success really being the determinant factor in a TV Series being made.
Production company Platige Films will work with Netflix on the show, and video game fans will be familiar with their recent work, producing an impressive trailer for The Witcher 3 called “The Trail”, as well as cinematics for Halo 5: Guardians.
Along with Hissrich and Sapkowski, producers announced so far include Jason Brown, Sean Daniel, Jaroslaw Sawko and Tomasz Baginski.
Browns most notable work is as a producer on full length features Miracle Boy and VOD Indie. For Sean Daniel it’s as a producer for The Mummy movie franchise and The Expanse TV show on SyFy. Sawko is a Visual Effects Artist who has been nominated for a Visual Effects Society Award for his work on “Paths of Hate”, an animated short dealing with humanities internal demons that push people into fury and hate and Baginski may be known by Witcher fans as director of the cut scenes for the Video Game series.
With a fairly solid and experienced production crew, fans will be hotly anticipating cast announcements which are sure to follow. It has been confirmed that video game protagonist Geralt will be the shows main character, with other series characters Yennefer, Ciri, Triss and Dandelion also being featured.
Leave a Reply