The Witcher's Showrunner Claims The Series Will Not Stick To The Books' Precise Trajectory
Netflix's popular "The Witcher" series has been a huge hit for the streaming company, which is probably best highlighted by its spin-off animation film "The Witcher: Nightmare of the Wolf" and the just recently released prequel-style story of "The Witcher: Blood Origin," which establishes the creation of the monster-hunting caste of augmented humans. Based on the book franchise by Andrzej Sapkowski, this series typically follows Geralt of Rivia, a gruff magic-wielding warrior that is able to stand toe-to-toe with some of the most fearsome and deadly creatures imaginable.
Besides the above Netflix endeavors to adapt the world of "The Witcher," there is also an immensely popular video game series. However, both the Netflix installments and video games are only adapted from the book source material, which means there tends to be a fair amount of creative liberty with these stories. Although some scenes are lifted directly from the books in both shows and video games, there are several moments that play out entirely differently or are completely new experiences altogether. It should be noted that Netflix's "The Witcher" is playing a bit closer to the books than the video games, but by no means is the show an exact, direct adaptation of Sapkowski's novels.
The Witcher showrunner constantly thinks about the best way to adapt the stories
Speaking with Collider, showrunner Lauren Schmidt Hissrich explained that even though the Netflix series is based on the "Witcher" books, they aren't necessarily beholden to them. She said, "I think a lot of people believe that you sort of go into a season of television saying it's going to be this book, but clearly that's something that we have not been able to do because there are some books that are like 'Blood of Elves,' which Season 2 sort of loosely was based around. It didn't have enough action to keep us going, so we ended up having to bring parts of 'Baptism of Fire' into it. Parts of the earlier short stories, I mean Declan's episode, 'A Grain of Truth,' was what kicked off Season 2."
Hissrich continued, saying that she and her fellow production staff knew that they would have to be flexible with the stories in order to make a visual spectacle that wasn't uneven. One simply needs the plot to go with the action, and if Netflix's "The Witcher" would skew either way it would provoke some kind of response — too much plot and people would complain about how slow-moving the show is, and too much action results in a shallow affair. Hissrich added that the delicate balancing act as to how to present and adapt the story of its source material is always in the back of her mind.
Either way, it seems Hissrich definitely knows when and where to blend and meld the stories into a visually coherent whole. Now fans just have to wait for "The Witcher" Season 3 to see where the story goes next.