The news has come out that Lauren Schmidt Hissrich will be the one adapting The Witcher for Netflix as its show-runner as well as one of its executive producers. For those who are unfamiliar with her name, Schmidt Hissrich has served as both writer and executive producer on both Daredevil and The Defenders, meaning that she brings plenty of expertise and experience to her new role. As for The Witcher, well, one can’t help but suspect that this will be Netflix’s attempt to emulate the success of HBO’s Game of Thrones, which may or may not be a fair statement on the matter.
What Is The Witcher?
In short, The Witcher started out as a fantasy series consisting of both novels and short stories written by the Polish author Andrzej Sapkowski. It is centered around a witcher named Geralt of Rivia, with witchers being monster hunters with supernatural capabilities picked up through a combination of training and outright body modification. Much of The Witcher concerns the relationship between Geralt and his adopted daughter Ciri, who has a special destiny ahead of her. Considering how that tends to turn out in fantasy series, it should come as no surprise to learn that Geralt has to overcome a remarkable range of threats in his efforts to protect his adopted daughter.
The Witcher is huge in its native Poland, so it should come as no surprise to learn that Polish developers have been interested in making video games based on the series for a long, long time. In time, this resulted in The Witcher, The Witcher 2, and The Witcher 3 from CD Projekt RED, with each game having become more and more successful. In fact, The Witcher 3 is so successful that it had managed to sell close to 10 million copies by March of 2016, which was in addition to a slew of awards and other accolades. Due to the success of the games, there was a corresponding increase in interest in The Witcher series outside of Eastern Europe, which explains why that it will soon be receiving a Netflix adaptation.
With that said, it is interesting to note that The Witcher is in a real sense, a very modern sort of series, with an excellent example being the deliberate use of anachronisms in the books. Combined with genuine inspiration from elements of Polish culture, a particularly ironic sense of humor, the grey and grey sense of morality, and plenty of opportunities for sex and violence, it is not difficult to see why people see potential in the series when Game of Thrones is one of the most popular series to be found on the screen.
Further Considerations
Of course, it remains to be seen what the Netflix adaptation will look like once it comes out. After all, considering that Schmidt Hissrich has just been chosen as show-runner, it should come as no surprise to learn that it is still very early in the development process, meaning that there is still plenty of time for interested individuals to speculate to their heart’s content. Of course, considering the passion of The Witcher fandom, it seems probable that any news will spread like wildfire as soon as it comes out, meaning that interested individuals might want to keep an ear out for it.
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