Netflix has been building its The Witcher TV franchise at a mechanical pace over the past few years . Since the show premiered in 2019, there have been two seasons starring Henry Cavill, the animated prequel film Bane of the Wolf and the recent spin-off Bloodline . This year we will see the third season of the main series, the last with Henry Cavill in the lead role. After him, he will be replaced by Liam Hemsworth for the next two seasons. Plus, Netflix is reportedly developing a spin-off about a group of teenage thugs called “The Rats.” There is even talk of a children’s series about The Witcher .
However, Netflix doesn’t have a very good track record of sticking to its source material. In favor of completely new threads, the creators of the second season of The Witcher abandoned the content of the book on which the series is based.
Sapkowski is famous for his rather unfavorable opinion about the games that were created on the basis of his work. What do you think about the way Netflix uses The Witcher ? This is another topic that the author raised during his speech at the 2023 Taipei International Book Exhibition.
The author gave a short but eloquent answer:
I’ve seen better. I’ve seen worse.
Sapkowski’s quote and photo from the Taipei International Book Exhibition was shared on Twitter by @Kathleenmms321 and can be found in the tweet below.
This is not the first time that Sapkowski shares his opinions on Netflix’s The Witcher , although he has always tried to keep the wording neutral. During an interview at the University of Lodz shortly after the premiere of the first season, Sapkowski was asked if he was satisfied with the script of the series in relation to his books.
Why not, I am. It’s far from my books, but adaptations have it. (…) Adaptations are always worse, they cannot be better. Adaptations of any literature can be represented by a Gaussian curve, which […] resembles a huge tit. At the bottom of it are adaptations that are monstrous […]. Then you go up, up and at the very top of this Gaussian curve there are good adaptations. Then we go down […] and at the very bottom there are better adaptations. Great rarity. Rarity. In general, adaptations are always worse.
said the author.
The third season of The Witcher is due to be released on Netflix this summer.