Netflix releases first trailer for The Witcher
Live-action adaptation of the fantasy series “coming soon”
Netflix has released the first trailer for The Witcher, its upcoming adaption of Andrzej Sapkowski’s fantasy novels.
It sets the scene for the eight-episode season, which is due to launch in the fourth quarter of 2019, providing a first look at monster hunter Geralt (Henry Cavill), sorceress Yennefer (Anya Cholatra) and princess Ciri (Freya Allan) in action.
Showrunner Lauren Hissrich has said the “very adult” show takes the franchise in a different direction to CD Projekt’s game series, which helped popularise The Witcher.
“There’s a lot of obviously epic excitement that starts in the saga of the books. But the short stories provided a lot of world building and lay the foundation of this Continent and the politics of it and the understanding of the people of it and those really came into focus in the first season,” she said.
“I think people are going to be surprised by how many monsters we were able to do and how integral they are to story. It really feels like the monster stories become analogs for bigger things happening in the world right now in different political phenomenons.”
Former Superman actor Cavill, “a big gamer” who has played CD Projekt’s series “a lot”, also told Entertainment Weekly: “I think it’s a fantasy series which uses all the regular fantasy tropes — gnomes, elves, dwarves, monsters, heroes,” but “it really dives deeply into very real-world issues that we experience — racism, social injustice, the nature of politics and how they affect on our world dramatically on a daily basis.”
According to CD Projekt, the Witcher games have sold more than 40 million copies across three releases since launching in 2007.
The most recent and commercially successful of the titles, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, was recently confirmed for release on Switch in 2019, marking the first time the series will be made available on a Nintendo platform.
CD Projekt Red‘s Alvin Liu has told VGC the studio is “proud” of The Witcher 3’s upcoming Switch port and that its “biggest changes” involve user interface and controls.
