Andrzej Sapkowski, the author of “The Witcher” fantasy series, said that he shared ideas with Netflix about how his books could better fit into their TV series, but they ignored his suggestions.
“The set was tremendous. Tremendous … I gave them some ideas but they never listened to me,” Sapkowski told the YouTube channel Cerealkillerz at Vienna Comic Con. “It’s normal. ‘Who’s this? It’s a writer. It’s nobody.’” (RELATED: Companies Are Throwing Thousands Of Diversity Officers Overboard: REPORT)
“My raw material when I work is only letters. I don’t describe pictures. I don’t see any pictures. I use the letters only because I know my reader will see the letters only,” Sapkowski added. “I look at these and say, ‘Whoa! This is the way they picture it. Interesting!’ Sometimes it’s very nice for me, sympathetic. Sometimes it isn’t. But I will not elaborate.”
The TV series’ divergence from some of the source material has irked many fans. Henry Cavill, the actor who played the leading character for the TV series, told The Hollywood Reporter back in November 2021 that he was committed to playing the actor as long as Netflix was respectful of the source material.
“As long as we can keep telling great stories which honor Sapkowski’s work,” Cavill told the outlet in response to whether he plans to continue to support the vision behind the TV series.
Cavill announced his departure from Netflix’s “The Witcher” series in October 2022, leading fans to speculate that the move came as a result of dissatisfaction over how his character was being written differently from the source material.
One critic of the Netflix series wrote on the PC Gamer that the TV series was “truncated, tonally different and simplified from the source material.”
“The Witcher” series has also spawned a successful game series with over 75 million copies sold, The Verge reported.