Netflix is developing a new live-action Witcher series set long before the adventures of Geralt of Rivia (Henry Cavill), Yennefer of Vengerberg (Anya Chalotra), and Princess Ciri (Freya Allan). Titled The Witcher: Blood Origin, this six-episode limited series will take place during the height of the elven civilization, exploring it while telling a story of the world’s first witcher. Declan de Barra, one of the screenwriters on the first show, will both helm and executive produce Blood Origin. Meanwhile, Lauren Schmidt Hissrich, showrunner of the first series, will serve as an executive producer.
First released in December 2019, Netflix’s dark fantasy series The Witcher was a hit, so much so it was renewed even before it first aired. Soon after the first season, the streaming service announced its plans for an anime film The Witcher: Nightmare of the Wolf. Beau DeMayo, another screenwriter on the first series, is working on that project alongside Hissrich. The animation studio tasked with producing this film is Studio Mir, best known for Legend of Korra and Voltron: Legendary Defender.
And so the saga of The Witcher continues. It began in 1986 when Polish writer Andrzej Sapkowski wrote a short story Wiedźmin for a contest held by the fantasy magazine Fantastyka. And while his story won merely the third place, it also spawned eight books, a card game, a tabletop RPG and three highly popular video games that turned it into a global pop culture phenomenon. So, take that, Fantastyka!
