The Witcher fans are up in arms again, after creator Andrzej Sapkowski said Netflix “never listened” to any of his ideas for the show.
The Witcher series hasn’t been doing too well in recent years, routinely angering fans by straying too far from the source material, putting little effort into CGI and costumes, and replacing Geralt of Rivia actor Henry Cavill with Liam Hemsworth for future seasons. Cavill’s departure was the turning point for a lot of fans, who have been rallying against the show ever since. Now, they have a new reason to be angry.
In a recent interview with The Witcher creator Andrzej Sapkowski, a YouTuber by the name of Cerealkillerz asked the author about the Netflix show during Vienna Comic Con as well as his thoughts about the many adaptations there have been over the years. When asked whether Netflix took any ideas from him when he went to visit the shows sets, Sapkowski jokes that the showrunners “never listened to me”.
“But no, maybe I gave them some ideas, but they never listen to me. They never listen to me, but it’s normal, ‘Who’s this? It’s the writer, it’s nobody.'”
As you can probably imagine, these comments from Sapkowski have riled up Witcher fans even more, who were already fuming at Netflix for the show’s depreciating quality and the treatment of series self-proclaimed megafan Henry Cavill. Learning that those behind the show had the opportunity to take advice from the creator of The Witcher himself, but ignored it, has inspired a new wave of anger in places such as The Witcher subreddit.
However, before you go and grab your pitchfork and join them, it’s worth noting that Sapkowski doesn’t have much love for any adaptation of his own work, and mostly sees them as convenient ways of keeping the lights on. He’s gone on record before saying that he’s not a fan of CD Projekt Red’s work, mostly down to the medium if anything else, and only really accepts his own books as canon in the extended Witcher universe.
His laughter and sarcastic tone while answering the question from Cerealkillerz also suggests that he doesn’t care that much about the Netflix show straying from the source material and ignoring his ideas, and that he’s mainly interested in finishing his latest book which he says should be released in Poland some time in late 2024. He’s always been a very sarcastic figure, so we can probably rule this out as him rallying fans against Netflix. If anything, he seems a lot cheerier here than usual.
In other Witcher news, it was recently reported that the Netflix show could potentially end with Season 5, meaning we’ll have only two seasons of the show with Liam Hemsworth as Geralt. Showrunner Lauren Schmidt Hissirch claimed to have had a seven-season plan in the woirks back when the show began in 2019, meaning the story she plans to tell might get cut a lot shorter than previously thought.
