Netflix new live-action series based on “The Witcher” will launch in the company’s fourth quarter, which runs from October to December, the company’s chief content officer noted in an earnings call this week.
Netflix CCO Ted Sarandos was responding to a question about Neflix 2019 line-up when he brought up the timing for the show, which is based on a series of books made internationally popular through successful video game adaptations.
“Well, definitely in the third quarter, we’ve got new episodes and new seasons of some of our most loved and most watched shows on Netflix, ‘Stranger Things,’ ‘Casa de Papel,’ ‘Orange Is the New Black,’ ’13 Reasons Why,’ ‘Elite,’ which was a big hit for us right out of Spain, a new season from Ryan Murphy of ‘The Politician,’ a brand new show on Netflix that we think our audiences are going to love,” he said. “And then you start seeing later in the fourth quarter some of our bigger film investments coming through like ‘Irishman,’ like ‘6 Underground’ and also a big new original series that we’re currently shooting in Hungary called ‘The Witcher,’ that is an enormous European IP, very popular game and Book IP, that we think is going to make a really fun global series.”
Netflix gained 9.6 million streaming customers in the first quarter of 2019 — ahead of projections and a quarterly record — but a price hike in the U.S. and other countries is slowing its momentum going into Q2.
News hit in September that Cavill would be taking on the role of Geralt of Rivia (the titular Witcher in both the video games and books). Season 1 of “The Witcher” will feature eight episodes, each running about an hour.
“The Witcher” is a fantasy series from Polish author Andrzej Sapkowski. It details the adventures of Geralt of Rivia, a monster hunter who battles creatures from Slavic lore. The stories were adapted into a popular role-playing game series by developer CD Projekt Red.
