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‘The Witcher’: Turning The Game Into A Movie

By Stacey Cole
Published on: 03:46 PST, Nov 15, 2015

The Witcher has been known around the world as one of the best video game series ever, full of many different types of quests. The series is now on its third iteration, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, which has taken the quests up a notch. The cinematic trailer for The Witcher 3 is quite fantastic.

Stevivor reports Mateusz Tomaszkiewicz, Principal Narrative Designer of the game, thinks they learned many lessons from earlier quests and they approached “Hearts of Stone,” the first expansion of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, differently.

“In ‘Hearts of Stone,’ we came up with the right ideas right from the start. We spent more time coming up with ideas from scratch; with ideas that felt right and natural. Nothing was added simply to make something else [like another quest] make sense.”

If the creators of the game have learned lessons that will ultimately make the game better, what lessons have been learned that would allow the creation of The Witcher as a movie? Apparently fans will be able to find out, as there is now a Witcher movie in the works that is due out in 2017. There has been plenty of action on Twitter after news of the movie got out.

According to Time, The Witcher is based on a series of stories, and it is these stories that will be adapted for the silver screen.

ScreenCrush gives more of a background to the game series. The Witcher was originally a short story written by Andrzej Sapkowski and published in the sci-fi literary magazine Fantastyka in 1986. The Witcher became very popular, and another fourteen stories were written within that universe. This led to a comic book series, a television show, a movie (Hexer, released in 2001), and ultimately the video game. Since it’s been around in one form or another for nearly thirty years, The Witcher is certainly popular and has continued to delight fans.

Financial Spots reveals that the Sean Daniel Company will work with Platige Films to create the feature-length film. Tomasz Bagi?ski, who was nominated for an Academy Award for his work on The Cathedral, will direct the movie, and the script is being written by Thania St. John, who is known for her work on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Chicago Fire, and Grimm. The producers will include Jaros?aw Sawko, Piotr Sikora, Sean Daniel, and Jason Brown.

Fans of The Witcher video games should be aware that the movie will not follow the game. Instead, according to Reality Today, it will follow the original stories written by Sapkowski. However, it will still involve the main character from the games, mercenary witcher Geralt of Rivia, whose magical powers make him the best monster hunter in the world.

Whether or not fans of The Witcher video game will be happy with the movie remains to be seen. Sometimes it is either an “I love it” or “It’s ruined” kind of reaction. Screen Rant reports that fans are a bit nervous because Platige Films does not have a big success under their belts, and the Sean Daniels Company has not been consistent in their success (although they did produce the Mummy movies for Universal Studios).

In the end, only time will tell, but over the next two years, as the movie comes together, there will mostly likely be updates and leaked details that will whet the appetites of fans that are eagerly awaiting the release of The Witcher movie in 2017. Fans can only hope that if Hollywood is taking this on, the end result will be worth the wait.

[Photo by charnsitr / Shutterstock]

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