Netflix’s The Witcher release date confirmed with new trailer

Netflix’s The Witcher series will launch on December 20.

The company confirmed the release date and launched a new trailer for the show on Thursday. The Witcher’s first season will consist of eight one-hour episodes.

The live-action adaption of Andrzej Sapkowski’s fantasy novels received its first trailer in July, offering a 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.

“We’re not adapting the videogames, it’s a straight adaptation of the books,” Hissrich told Entertainment Weekly. “Which is great as the videogames are also an adaptation of the books. They went one direction, we actually get to go another. We’re kind of holding close to our chest what we’re doing in the first season.

“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.”

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 commercially successful of the titles, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, released for Switch in October, marking the first time the series has appeared on a Nintendo platform.