The popular streaming giant Netflix, has just released behind the scenes teaser for a new series titled, The Witcher which is set to star Man of Steel lead Henry Cavill as Geralt of Rivia. Judging by the 2001 Polish film (Wiedźmin aka The Hexer) and the subsequently released thirteen episode television series, this will be the short story’s third incarnation.
Although originally based on Andrzej Sapkowski 1990’s fantasy short story series, The Witcher video games have also proved to be very successful for the series as well, and as of March 2018 the game series have sold over 33 million copies worldwide.
The books have further been described as having a cult following in its homeland Poland in particular and other Central and Eastern European countries such as Serbia, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Ukraine, Hungary, Romania, and Russia.
The first short story (The Last Wish) and it’s following sequels created a fantasy world set on a place named the Continent, where several thousand years earlier was settled by elven species from overseas. There, the elves found similarly mythological creatures such as gnomes and dwarves, which kick started a period of war amongst each other as they fought viciously for the surrounding land.
While initially, human colonists arrived five hundred years prior before the events in the books, and ignited their own series of wars against the creature populations. They became the reigning victors and sent the non-human races to small ghettos that were located in areas populated by humans. Although, the dwarves relegated themselves to the mountains, while the elves settled in the plains and forests.
According to Netflix’s online short blurb for the series, The Witcher will follow the titular witcher named Geralt, a mutated monster hunter, as he struggles to find his place in a world where people often prove more wicked than beasts. The synopsis compliments the series original mythos well, except Sapkowski’s focus on Geralt’s singular quest to only hunt the land’s surrounding monsters.
The BTS teaser’s video is below:
Tvline originally reported this story.