Polish animation studio Platige Image announced today that they will be producing an English-language drama series for Netflix based on The Witcher, the series of fantasy books written by Polish author Andrzej Sapkowski and made famous in the American mainstream by the Bioware series of games of the same name.
Sapkowski has been writing novels set in the fantasy realm of The Witcher since the 1990s, to great critical acclaim and success. He will serve as a creative consultant on the Netflix series, and comments “I’m thrilled that Netflix will be doing an adaptation of my stories, staying true to the source material and the themes that I have spent over thirty years writing…I’m excited about our efforts together, as well as the team assembled to shepherd these characters to life.”
The show will be helmed by four executive producers: Sean Daniel (The Mummy and Ben Hur), Jason Brown (The Expanse), and Tomek Baginski and Jarek Sawko of Platige Image, creators of the BAFTA award-winning short film The Fallen Art. Baginski is also slated to direct “at least one episode each season.”
Of special note here in regards to this announcement is the fact that we do not actually yet know whether the series will be live action, animated, CGI, or some combination of the three. Usually, when a series of novels or video games are adapted into a film or TV series, it’s produced in live action to bring the characters to life and maintain appeal with mainstream audiences. Additionally, executive producers Sean Daniel and Jason Brown both have resumes that are comprised almost exclusively of live action productions.
However, Platige Image, the studio that is behind today’s announcement and is actually making the series, is an animation company, known predominantly for their 3D CGI-rendered short films and cutscenes. Even their attachment to The Witcher series itself is based in animation, as they have notably created many of The Witcher‘s award winning CGI cutscenes across multiple games in the series. Also, no information has been released on casting choices regarding who will play Geralt or Ciri or any of the other beloved characters from The Witcher, which could also point towards the series being animated and thus only being voice-acted (and potentially face-motion-captured).
There is currently no announced release date for the series.