The Witcher has been a solid success for Netflix, with the Henry Cavill-fronted fantasy series already nabbing a second season. And now the streaming service is aiming to expand the world further by exploring events from a time long before the series starts.
Set in an elven world 1200 years before the world of The Witcher, Blood Origin will tell a story lost to time - the origin of the very first Witcher, and the events that lead to the pivotal "conjunction of the spheres," when the worlds of monsters, men, and elves merged to become one.
Declan De Barra, a writer on the main show, will create the prequel, working alongside Witcher show-runner Lauren Lauren Schmidt Hissrich and creative consultant Andrzej Sapkowski. The plan is to shoot a six-episode miniseries to tell the story.
"As a lifelong fan of fantasy, I am beyond excited to tell the story The Witcher: Blood Origin, says De Barra. A question has been burning in my mind ever since I first read the Witcher books – What was the Elven world really like before the cataclysmic arrival of the humans? I've always been fascinated by the rise and fall of civilizations, how science, discovery, and culture flourish right before that fall. How vast swathes of knowledge are lost forever in such a short time, often compounded by colonization and a rewriting of history. Leaving only fragments of a civilization’s true story behind.
The Witcher: Blood Origin will tell the tale of the Elven civilization before its fall, and most importantly reveal the forgotten history of the very first Witcher.”
Which means no Cavill, then, but an opportunity to tell whole new stories. The show has yet to lock down a cast, but we do know it'll shoot in the UK.