It's been announced that producer Lauren Schmidt Hissrich will serve as showrunner and executive producer of Netflix's upcoming fantasy saga The Witcher. Hissrich is best known for her work co-executive producing and writing for mutiple TV series such as Netflix's The Defenders, Daredevil and Power.
It was announced last May that Netflix would be developing a TV series based on Polish writer writer’s Andrzej Sapkowski’s The Witcher saga. Since it's creation in 1994, the series of books has been adapted into comic books by Maciej Parowski, Bogusław Polch and Sapkowski and a Polish movie and television series (both titled The Hexer) in 2001 and 2002, respectively, starring Michał Żebrowski as Geralt of Rivia in both. The crowning achievement of The Witcher franchise has been its wildly popular video game series - The Witcher (2007), The Witcher 2: Assassin of Kings (2009) and The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt (2015). The third installment, Wild Hunt, is one of the most awarded video games of all time and has been praised for its vast open world, compelling storylines and complex characters.
Related: The Witcher TV Series Being Developed by Netflix
According to a new report on Variety, producer Lauren Schmidt Hissrich will serve as showrunner and executive producer of The Witcher TV series set to air on Netflix. So far, we know that the series will follow the story of Geralt of Rivia, a monster hunter known as a witcher, who went through a series of mutations at a young age that granted him superhuman abilities. The books and video games also feature a massive cast of side characters, including Geralt's adopted ward Ciri, a child of elder blood with extraordinary powers.
The series certainly has the opportunity to become Netflix's next big thing - perhaps even the next Game of Thrones. It has everything from intense romance to political intrigue and epic battles filled with powerful magic and dangerous beasts, and we can definitely see the series becoming a mega-hit if it has the perfect blend of the right cast, producers and writers.
This series is also going to have to compete with Amazon's upcoming Lord of the Rings TV series, which is expected to be a prequel set in Middle-earth before the events of the films. We think that The Witcher has the upper hand though, while the The Lord of the Rings is certainly more well-known and popular, it also has a dedicated fans base that will lash out of the series isn't on par with the original films and established lore - something that we saw with The Hobbit trilogy.
As for The Witcher, there is more room for the writers to have fun with the characters and story considering the franchise has already been adapted so may times and is more flexible when it comes to story as we enter a new age of fantasy TV programming.
Screen Rant will keep you updated on all news related to The Witcher.
Source: Variety