The Witcher S3: Bye Bye Henry

[karaddin]

7 hours ago, Werthead said:

He was snapped reading a Mass Effect branded-script just last year, but given that the Amazon show had not been announced yet, it's unlikely it was for that. It might be for a voice role in Mass Effect 5.

I think canonically Shepard is 35 at the time of ME1, so he's in the right age range and would be a huge get for the show if it moves forwards and stays truer to the games.

I thought that people zoomed in on the photo and found it was actually the Mass Effect wiki printed out? Lol. That's what I was thinking of though, if nothing else it shows he'd be interested

[Ran]

Looks like it might be Warhammer 40k at Amazon for Cavill, though it's very early days yet and it's not so much the "next gig" but the next-next-next gig -- got development and all to go through, if the deal is closed.

Edited December 16, 2022 by Ran

[Corvinus85]

1 hour ago, Ran said:

Looks like it might be Warhammer 40k at Amazon for Cavill, though it's very early days yet and it's not so much the "next gig" but the next-next-next gig -- got development and all to go through, if the deal is closed.

called it

[Calibandar]

Maybe the Amazon series might be the Eisenhorn series they announced years ago. Cavill would be interesting as the lead in that.

Then again you would think this is a separate show from that considering this is all new rumors and they announced Eisenhorn so long ago, but there has really been zero updates on that from Games Workshop the last 3 years.

[Denvek]

Can't really see Cavill as Eisenhorn - he'd fit more as a Commissar Gaunt or Cain.

[Werthead]

I don't see a problem with Cavill as Eisenhorn. He's not a great fit for Geralt either, but made that work.

Eisenhorn is simply the most logical starting point. It's small in scale but has glimpses of the wider setting: some Space Marines (but only a few, and briefly), the only Titans are in a ceremonial walk-past and a relatively small, focused and human cast in a relatively small settings doing very noir-ish stuff. It's eminently adaptable on a modern streaming budget and in a short space of time (the OG trilogy is made up of three books that barely crack 300 pages apiece). Also, it's excellent. Plus, if it's a huge success you can do the two sequel trilogies, in which Eisenhorn only has relatively limited appearances, which allows Cavill to kick things off and then move onto other things before coming back for effective cameos.

I don't think you can start with Gaunt's Ghosts, that's a $20 million per episode kind of show and I think Amazon might want something more constrained first. It definitely has to be on the table, though.

Horus Heresy is definitely off the table to start with, unless they go for animation.

Ciaphas Cain is a meta pisstake of WH40K, you don't lead with that. You do it five or six projects in to poke fun at it.

The other possibility is an original film, but I think everyone is aware of GW trying that with their Ultramarines movie, which turned out to be shit.

[Corvinus85]

On 12/16/2022 at 2:33 PM, Werthead said:

I don't see a problem with Cavill as Eisenhorn. He's not a great fit for Geralt either, but made that work.

Eisenhorn is simply the most logical starting point. It's small in scale but has glimpses of the wider setting: some Space Marines (but only a few, and briefly), the only Titans are in a ceremonial walk-past and a relatively small, focused and human cast in a relatively small settings doing very noir-ish stuff. It's eminently adaptable on a modern streaming budget and in a short space of time (the OG trilogy is made up of three books that barely crack 300 pages apiece). Also, it's excellent. Plus, if it's a huge success you can do the two sequel trilogies, in which Eisenhorn only has relatively limited appearances, which allows Cavill to kick things off and then move onto other things before coming back for effective cameos.

I don't think you can start with Gaunt's Ghosts, that's a $20 million per episode kind of show and I think Amazon might want something more constrained first. It definitely has to be on the table, though.

Horus Heresy is definitely off the table to start with, unless they go for animation.

Ciaphas Cain is a meta pisstake of WH40K, you don't lead with that. You do it five or six projects in to poke fun at it.

The other possibility is an original film, but I think everyone is aware of GW trying that with their Ultramarines movie, which turned out to be shit.

How knowledgeable do you have to be in the 40k verse to enjoy the Eisenhorn books?

[Ran]

Ciaphas Cain is basically the Warhammer 40k Flashman, I learned somewhere or other. Thought that was an amusing idea, but yeah, probably not where you should start the W40k universe.

Edited December 18, 2022 by Ran

[Werthead]

4 hours ago, Corvinus85 said:

How knowledgeable do you have to be in the 40k verse to enjoy the Eisenhorn books?

Absolutely not at all. I think it was partially, deliberately designed to be a good intro to the setting.

[mormont]

Maybe start a Warhammer thread for this conversation?

[Myrddin]

Maybe a dedicated Henry Cavill appreciation thread. He has a lot more supporters here than I knew.

Not larger supporters than my wife, but that'd be a whole other type of appreciation thread. 

[Heartofice]

Not sure if it was mentioned but there are rumours flying around the Cavill was difficult on set of the Witcher, was mostly ok season one but by season two was off writing his own scenes and pretty much running the show, and wouldn’t do sex scenes.

There seems to be talk that the Showrunners are briefing against him as revenge or something , but the reaction seems to be on Cavills side, coming across as the guy who actually cares about the Witcher and is a true fan, against a bunch of hacks who laugh at the material.

Might all be bullshit but it is going around.

[Ran]

I decided to Google and it's basically a gossip website posting an alleged anonymous account that reads very heavily like BS, like claiming Netflix fired him, essentially, which is absurd. And the bit that made me laugh at it was where it claims he "formed an alliance" with one writer who was a gamer like him (actually, also had to laugh at the bit saying he was a video game addict and was showing up late and unprepared because of gaming!) which is very, very clearly supposed to be ex-Witcher writer Beau DeMayo, the guy who called out the production for hiring writers who mocked and disliked the source material they were working from.

It's utter nonsense.

[Derfel Cadarn]

12 hours ago, Ran said:

I decided to Google and it's basically a gossip website posting an alleged anonymous account that reads very heavily like BS, like claiming Netflix fired him, essentially, which is absurd. And the bit that made me laugh at it was where it claims he "formed an alliance" with one writer who was a gamer like him (actually, also had to laugh at the bit saying he was a video game addict and was showing up late and unprepared because of gaming!) which is very, very clearly supposed to be ex-Witcher writer Beau DeMayo, the guy who called out the production for hiring writers who mocked and disliked the source material they were working from.

It's utter nonsense.

Interestingly, Lauren Hissrich tweeted briefly about DeMayo, saying he had written the Striga episode, and also was the one who decided to kill Eskel (which pissed off purists).

Also interestingly, I’ve seen various fans complain about deviations from the books - while also wanting more Geralt and more monsters. Despite the  post-short story novels having less Geralt and almost no witchering.

 

[IFR]

2 hours ago, Derfel Cadarn said:

Also interestingly, I’ve seen various fans complain about deviations from the books - while also wanting more Geralt and more monsters. Despite the  post-short story novels having less Geralt and almost no witchering.

I'm someone who complains about The Witcher. All I want is a good adaptation. It doesn't have to be loyal. The problem with the show is it's a terrible adaptation, and all its deviations are really poor quality storytelling. I like the books a lot, and so I can point to them as evidence that the story can be told well. The writers just don't seem to be up to the task.

Regardless of the behind the scenes drama, I don't see any way that the showrunner comes out of this looking good, considering that the story produced under her watch is appallingly awful.

[Ran]

4 hours ago, Derfel Cadarn said:

Interestingly, Lauren Hissrich tweeted briefly about DeMayo, saying he had written the Striga episode, and also was the one who decided to kill Eskel (which pissed off purists).

There was a rather coordinated push by the production to push back after DeMayo's remarks gained some traction, with Hissrich and then two or three other writers all speaking about how much they love the source material. Of course, the show has had 9 writers in total so far through when DeMayo left, so 4 people saying they love the material doesn't mean 5 others didn't hate it privately.

Presumably it was also something being done where they knew Cavill was leaving and were trying to shore up their reputation ahead of the inevitable speculation that he left because he was no longer happy with their work.

[Corvinus85]

4 hours ago, Derfel Cadarn said:

Interestingly, Lauren Hissrich tweeted briefly about DeMayo, saying he had written the Striga episode, and also was the one who decided to kill Eskel (which pissed off purists).

Also interestingly, I’ve seen various fans complain about deviations from the books - while also wanting more Geralt and more monsters. Despite the  post-short story novels having less Geralt and almost no witchering.

 

Is there something wrong with the Striga episode adaptation wise?

[mormont]

1 hour ago, Ran said:

There was a rather coordinated push by the production to push back after DeMayo's remarks gained some traction, with Hissrich and then two or three other writers all speaking about how much they love the source material. Of course, the show has had 9 writers in total so far through when DeMayo left, so 4 people saying they love the material doesn't mean 5 others didn't hate it privately.

I can't imagine it's common to have shows where the writers hate the source material. I mean, surely this is selected against: writers who hate the material are less likely to apply, less likely to be selected, less likely to remain in the job. Most people don't hate their jobs.

I can easily imagine that the writers have a very different view of the material than fans do, but there's a history of fans mistaking that for them 'hating' the source material.

1 hour ago, Ran said:

Presumably it was also something being done where they knew Cavill was leaving and were trying to shore up their reputation ahead of the inevitable speculation that he left because he was no longer happy with their work.

Seems a stretch. This is an imaginable scenario but is it really a presumable one?

[Werthead]

7 hours ago, Derfel Cadarn said:

Also interestingly, I’ve seen various fans complain about deviations from the books - while also wanting more Geralt and more monsters. Despite the  post-short story novels having less Geralt and almost no witchering.

A huge number of people who are complaining about "deviations from the source material" have not read the books, at all. They're most familiar with the video games.

4 hours ago, IFR said:

I'm someone who complains about The Witcher. All I want is a good adaptation. It doesn't have to be loyal. The problem with the show is it's a terrible adaptation, and all its deviations are really poor quality storytelling. I like the books a lot, and so I can point to them as evidence that the story can be told well. The writers just don't seem to be up to the task.

The books are very hard to adapt. They're all over the place pace-wise, there's a huge amount of time spent following the political storyline which doesn't really come to much (ironically, though, it comes to life in setting up the situation we see in the video games, despite that not being Sapkowski's intent) and the books effectively abandon Geralt being the main character about halfway through, and his screen time diminishes significantly whilst Ciri's shoots right up. Geralt also spends most of his time being Mario, constantly thinking Ciri is somewhere she isn't, but then we know that, so there's a lack of dramatic tension.

There's a lot of good stuff in the books but turning them into a TV series which requires more drama, a larger cast of characters, better pacing etc is a very tall order. Which isn't to say other writers or even the same ones couldn't have made much better choices, of course. 

1 hour ago, mormont said:

I can't imagine it's common to have shows where the writers hate the source material. I mean, surely this is selected against: writers who hate the material are less likely to apply, less likely to be selected, less likely to remain in the job. Most people don't hate their jobs.

There is another issue with modern Hollywood in that writers are in some short supply. Rather than finding the right match of writer and source material, they sometimes have to go with who is available, and a lot of that time it might be people who know nothing about the source material, are not invested in it and have no issue with changing things for reasons both valid and decidedly invalid.

[Ran]

2 hours ago, Werthead said:

There is another issue with modern Hollywood in that writers are in some short supply. Rather than finding the right match of writer and source material, they sometimes have to go with who is available, and a lot of that time it might be people who know nothing about the source material, are not invested in it and have no issue with changing things for reasons both valid and decidedly invalid.

Indeed.

I didn't mean to suggest everyone on the writer's staff, outside of the half that said they loved it, "hate" it -- it was simply pointing out that three or four writers saying they actually love the stuff doesn't say anything about the other five and six who haven't spoken.

But per Beau De Mayo, "some" of the writers "actively disliked" the books and "openly mock[ed]" the source material. Which he felt was bad for morale for those who were working on it and liked what they were doing. 

Looking further, I see Javier Grillo-Marxuach explicitly said the rumors are "false" that there are writers openly disliking the books... citing being in the writer's room for all of season 3. Which is an important point! Because as it happens, he wasn't part of season 1 and season 2, while Beau De Mayo was. Looking over the credits, there are three writers besides De Mayo who did not go on to write on season 3 (in De Mayo's case, because he became show runner of X-Men '97), which makes me think one or more of those writers were the people he was talking about.

Edited December 20, 2022 by Ran