The Witcher: Nightmare of the Wolf anime creators hope to get its sequel

Anyone familiar with the many iterations of The Wizard –Andrzej Sapkowski’s fantasy books, video games or the recent Netflix adaptation – meet the sword-wielding hero Geralt, a role currently owned by Henry Cavill. They can also meet Geralt’s teacher, the warlock Vesemir, who remains a relatively invisible figure in Geralt’s story on the Netflix series. But in the season 1 finale, Vesemir manifested himself in a warm voice echo: “Geralt, I’ve been waiting for you.”

We now know that Vesemir’s voiceover was an Easter egg for a then unannounced The Witcher: Wolf’s Nightmare, a film centered on Geralt’s mentor in his youth. Written and produced by Beau DeMayo, a staff writer at The Wizard, with The Wizard Showrunner and executive producer Lauren Schmidt Hissrich co-producer, the animated film, now available on Netflix, finds Vesemir working as a disgruntled servant of a noble estate. Soon he flees from servitude and seeks money and glory under the brutal Witcher headquarters of Kaer Morhen. There, his body and soul undergo numerous magical tests and experiments to mold his mortal body into a magical and suitable physique for the vocation of slaying monsters.

Netflix recruited Studio Mir, the team behind Avatar, the last airbender and Legend of Korra, to create the anime movie in The Witcher universe. While the inspiration of Berserk, Van Helsing, and Vampire Hunter It seems clear, the film’s director Kwang Il Han (with Myungran ‘Ran’ Ha translating) tells Polygon that when approached by Netflix creatives asked Studio Mir, “Should we go for the Japanese style or the Japanese? American?” The response of the study was significant. From Kwang’s perspective, “We opted for the Studio Mir style”, the animesque recognizable aesthetic in Studio Mir’s international work on One time and the recent Dota: dragon blood. He said the viewer can decide whether the movie fits the definition of “anime.”

For DeMayo, writing for Studio Mir’s animation brand is liberating compared to live action. “There is a scope in anime that you can do that you cannot do in action in particular projects,” he says, citing a sequence from the film, Judgment of the Pastures, where a herd of young Witcher protégés are forced to ingest poison. and twist in their cells. “Like not thinking about actor availability or active abilities or stunts that could potentially harm your actors… I don’t have to write about those considerations. The sky is the limit.”

DeMayo, who wrote the third episode of The Wizard flagship series, “Betrayer Moon”, says you are lucky enough to fill in the blanks of the Witcher story through Nightmare of the wolf ever since Sapkowski’s original material left those areas intact: from Vesemir’s poor adolescence to warlock-populated Kaer Morhen, eons before a warlock like Geralt was a rarity of its kind.

“The Wizard it’s about family. It’s about Geralt raising Ciri, it’s about Yennifer raising Ciri ”, says DeMayo referring to the arc of the next Sorcerer season. “[This anime] it’s a question of who raised Geralt? “

New Witcher characters join the family

Kim Bodnia (Killing Eva) will play Vesemir in season 2 of the flagship series, but Theo James (Divergent) assumes the character of Nightmare of the wolf, after voicing the Easter Egg cameo in season 1. “In the books, and even in the video games, Vesemir lent himself as this kind of grandfather figure,” says DeMayo. This is amusing as DeMayo’s writings approached the young Vesemir, endowed with a muscular body that wears the memetic franchise tradition of shimmering and soaking in bath water – with a more cheerful demeanor than the grumpy Geralt, though nothing less than a preview of how the rude Geralt was formed. According to DeMayo, James was chosen for his ability to be frivolous, romantic and heartbroken, “Vesemir is the Casanova, [as] Geralt is a serious bully, ”says DeMayo. “Deglan is the mighty one.”

To develop the Vesemir era, the team populated the single film with original characters that did not previously exist in the film. Sorcerer. There was a chance to catch a glimpse of an older warlock in the huge and austere Deglan, voiced by The Hobbit star Graham McTavish, who will also appear in The Wizard season 2 as spy master Dijkstra. Vesemir rivals the noble witch Tetra, her “purist” role voiced by Lara Pulver, who preaches suspicion about the ways of the Witcher and this conflict brings him into spoilery territory.

As for the familiar faces, Vesemir interacts with Filavandrel, the dethroned King of the Elves that Tom Canton repeated from his introduction in “Four Marks”, the second The Wizard episode. Haunted by the extermination of his elven race, he is investigating his own mystery. He appeared due to his moral compass in contrast to Vesemir’s lack and the opportunity to work with a character who can live for centuries and “speak to the structure” of anime and show.

Are more animated Witchers on the way?

It is Nightmare of the wolf the spark of more The Wizard animated projects on Netflix? While the film is self-contained, there are a few loose ends produced so as not to question this. Netflix has invested in the transmission of products derived from anime or in the adaptation of franchises such as The Pacific coast and Dota. Could these open threads influence the second season of live action or other parts of the franchise?

All DeMayo can divulge is that those open ends were conscious creative decisions. Already, the Sorcerer has a live action The Witcher: Blood Origin prequel, involving Michelle Yeoh and Jodie Turner-Smith, on the way.

To director Kwang, “I hope the audience loves it [the film] enough to create the next part of the project as well. “In response to a question about whether the audience could generate more Sorcerer projects, he replied: “That is natural.”

The Witcher: The Wolf’s Nightmare is now available on Netflix.