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The Witcher on Netflix.


Macklunkey

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Did someone recommend Travis Fimmel as Geralt? <barf> Why not get that Sons of Anarchy guy who ruined Pacific Rim and the new King Arthur movie while we're at it? Geralt is going to be a tough one to cast. People who played the games have a specific vision of him--and why not? He was amazing. When I got the first book, I had already played the first game, and I could only hear Geralt's voice from the game as I read the books. When I heard the audiobooks--I suppose I grew to love the great voice work for Geralt, but I was able to abandon that as my "canon Geralt" because the audiobook voice actor read girls' voices in a high pitched, fake girl voice which is a pet-peeve of mine.

American audiences will have a specific expectation for these characters--and it's different than adapting book material, because what audiences expect has already been very visual. I wonder how Netflix aims to handle this.

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On 2017-5-19 at 1:51 PM, HouseVelaryon said:

Oh are they doing books? I was under the impression they were doing an adaptation of the game haha my bad!

As we said earlier, this is going to be a source of interesting conflict. About 95% of the global audience and 99.9% of the American/UK audience know of The Witcher from the games (and I suspect most of them don't know they are books, or think the books are based on the games), so if they do something completely different from the aesthetics of the games the early adopters will be a bit confused. The show will live or die on how it resonates with the wider audience, of course, so they can take a fresh take altogether.

The easiest solution is to hew to the game descriptions/visuals whilst adapting to the stories. In fact, they did that with the CG intro to the first Witcher game, which adapts one of the short stories.

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On 20/05/2017 at 0:19 AM, HouseVelaryon said:

Geralt - Nikolaj Coster - Waldau 

Yennefer - Eva Green 

Triss - Jessica Chastain 

Ciri - Natalie Dormer 

Emhyr - Charles Dance (voiced the character in the game as well)

Vesemir - Stellan Skarsgard 

Bloody Baron - Brendan Gleeson would be so perfect

 

 

 

On 20/05/2017 at 0:42 AM, Filippa Eilhart said:

and Ciri isn't 35 :D

 

On 20/05/2017 at 0:46 AM, 3CityApache said:

Yeah, that too. :D

Especially during the short stories she's just a kid.

She's not even close to 35 in TW3 either. About the only thing Natalie Dormer fits for as Ciri is similarity of accent.

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On 5/20/2017 at 1:36 PM, Werthead said:

As we said earlier, this is going to be a source of interesting conflict. About 95% of the global audience and 99.9% of the American/UK audience know of The Witcher from the games (and I suspect most of them don't know they are books, or think the books are based on the games), so if they do something completely different from the aesthetics of the games the early adopters will be a bit confused. The show will live or die on how it resonates with the wider audience, of course, so they can take a fresh take altogether.

The easiest solution is to hew to the game descriptions/visuals whilst adapting to the stories. In fact, they did that with the CG intro to the first Witcher game, which adapts one of the short stories.

I wonder what's more important to audiences in a place like America--Geralt's look or his voice? I love his voice. I don't know. Just something I often wonder about when this topic comes up. I thought the reader for the audiobooks did a great Geralt though, so I suppose the voice may not be as important as I thought. The game's voice actor is just so distinctive--kind of like Kain from Legacy of Kain--where if I hear the voice actor, I know him.

Either way, I think this series has a lot of potential. Visuals will be a big part of it, especially if they begin with adapting the Last Wish. I wonder if they'll mix classic fairy tale imagery with grim, realistic imagery to create something unique. I'm pretty excited. The Witcher (books and games) are about my favorite thing ever. I just started Lady of the Lake and I'm so sad it's all coming to a close.

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Geralt's english voice actor for the games, Doug Cockle, does not have much of an on-camera CV. That's not to say he can't act, I haven't seen him, but if the show is going to be live action it'd be a pretty big risk to cast him as Geralt; regardless of how distinctive his voice is.

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It's worth reminding people, with all this talk about actors having the right look, that it hasn't even been confirmed yet whether this will be live-action or animation. Yes, I am a professional wet blanket. :P

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The heavy involvement of the CG team does seem to hint at it being animated, but that'd be quite expensive and time-consuming. Live action seems more likely, with heavy CG use for when the monsters show up, but they need to confim.

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On 19/05/2017 at 2:48 PM, Sun Worshipper said:

On that note: what part of the books is everyone most excited to see on-screen?

The whole Aretuza mess from book 4, Ciri's journeys, the first encounter between Geralt and Yennefer, the time they spent at that quiet (erotic and full of drugs, cant remember the name) on their way south towards Nilfgard, Jaskier's songs and quips (it's Dandelion for you but for me he'll always be Jaskier)... and so much more ! 

And I hope they wont immediatly cast a teenager for Ciri. They should cast a child for the beginning of the story and let her grow through the course of the show (just saying that cause I saw a fancast of Imogen Potts as her, but she's way too old, imo !) 

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7 hours ago, Arkash said:

The whole Aretuza mess from book 4, Ciri's journeys, the first encounter between Geralt and Yennefer, the time they spent at that quiet (erotic and full of drugs, cant remember the name) on their way south towards Nilfgard, Jaskier's songs and quips (it's Dandelion for you but for me he'll always be Jaskier)... and so much more ! 

And I hope they wont immediatly cast a teenager for Ciri. They should cast a child for the beginning of the story and let her grow through the course of the show (just saying that cause I saw a fancast of Imogen Potts as her, but she's way too old, imo !) 

Ah, I knew I knew her (Imogen Poots)--she was in 28 Weeks Later. She's beautiful, and could pull off Ciri...if they were going for an older Ciri, but as you said, much of the book Ciri is younger. I had no idea that Imogen was 27! She looks very young, but still, for Ciri--she needs to be a child when she first meets, Geralt, I think. Their meeting in Brokilon could be a kind of reverse Arya storyline--where Arya actually ran into someone good and helpful instead of atrocity after atrocity. 

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Oh, I thought live action was already confirmed. Well in case it's animated I would go with game VAs unless there are any VAs from the games that are actually not very good. Or if the show wants to give certain characters different accents. I do feel like Dwarfs having Scottish brogue is pretty well cliche, for instance. But from my playing of TW3 I'd say all of the VAs for the main cast are good enough.

I really want to see some funny conversations with trolls. As...what?...chaotic neutral alignment creatures, with speech and reasoning ability, it's a really good change up from the more mindless grunting presentation of trolls that we usually see.

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There is a mention of a troll maintaining the bridge in The Last Wish short story (when the village head explains to Geralt, that it is less expensive for them to pay him a fee than to kill him and having to maintain the bridge themselves), but AFAIR that's about it, so essentialy there are no trolls in the books.

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