Platige, a Polish animation and film studio, have announced that they will be bringing the wonderful world of Witcher to Netflix. And with it comes two very surprising twists: firstly that CD Projekt Red who brought us the popular games will not be involved, and (perhaps more surprisingly) that Andrzej Sapkowski, the Polish author that brought us the eight Witcher novels, will be.
You may recall that Eurogamer did an interview with Sapkowski in March this year about his involvement with the game franchise, where he revealed that he was not involved with any of them and does not receive any royalties.
"I was stupid enough to sell them rights to the whole bunch. They offered me a percentage of their profits. I said, 'No, there will be no profit at all - give me all my money right now! The whole amount.' It was stupid. I was stupid enough to leave everything in their hands because I didn't believe in their success. But who could foresee their success? I couldn't."
Platige must have heard that call, or seen the light of opportunity. The series will be called the Witcher Saga and is currently being produced for Netflix. Executive producers Sean Daniel and Jason Brown have given some detail on the upcoming series, stating that the Witcher world is about an unconventional family joining to fight for truth in a dangerous world.
But let's be honest... what we really want to see are magic and mythological creatures. I'm all for a drama series based on the novels, but I really hope the bestiary can come to life. Let's get some expensive special effects in there for good measure and throw some fire at a griffin's wings. A grave hag or two won't hurt.
There will be a real focus on morals and challengers though, and not just against the creatures that may be faced. Tomas Baginski, who developed the intro movies for all the Witcher games, and Jared Sawko gives some more insight:
"There is a moral and intellectual depth in these books that goes beyond genre. It is a story about today and today's challenges, hidden under a fantasy cover. It is a story about us, about the monster and the hero inside all of our hearts."
Hopefully our love for intellectual drama, magic and mythology can be balanced somehow. From what I've seen so far from series where the supernatural or magic are concerned, the start of the series overwhelms us with these goodies, just to filter out after a season or two and maybe flash us with some monsters near the end of an episode. I'm really hoping for more excitement than this in this upcoming series.
Source: Platige; Eurogamer
