Witcher Creator Lands New Netflix Deal, Ready To Create Even More Spinoffs
You can expect even more Witcher projects on Netflix coming soon.
This article is more than 2 years old
Lauren Schmidt Hissrich took the source material from The Witcher fantasy novels by Andrzej Sapkowski and created a show on Netflix. That show went on to star Henry Cavill and become a huge hit for the streaming service. While audiences have still only had the opportunity to watch season one of the series, The Witcher season 2 is on the way, along with a new prequel series, and an anime film. Fans can trust that Netflix isn’t sitting around waiting for things to release before they make more plans. As part of their efforts to apparently create a full-on Witcher Cinematic Universe, they have now signed a huge deal with the show’s creator.
Following the announcement, the Witcher show creator hopped on Twitter and shared that the new deal is a career dream come true.
The deal signs the writer on for a creative partnership for the next several years. This is similar to the deals that Shonda Rhimes, Ryan Murphy, and other show creators have been signing with the platform. The deal has her creating, producing, and writing shows on the streaming service. While not all of these creations will be part of The Witcher and its ever-expanding universe, it does include the current work she has on that project for Netflix and has the potential to lead to even more spinoffs as her work moves forward. In response to the announcement, Lauren Schmidt Hissrich shared that while she looks forward to working on new projects, her heart still belongs to The Witcher.
Currently, there are quite a few fantasy series in the works or already making their way to streaming, most of them comparable to Game of Thrones. These projects take on an epic scale and include things like Amazon’s upcoming Lord of the Rings. It will be interesting to see how The Witcher fares against these other titles. It will also be interesting to see if the creator of this Netflix hit moves on to projects outside of the expanding universe she got off the ground into even more fantasy projects, or if she moves outside of that genre.
Early on, Lauren Schmidt Hissrich worked on contemporary series as a writer and producer. Notably, she worked on Private Practice, the Grey’s Anatomy spinoff from creator Shonda Rhimes, who has a similar deal with Netflix. In more recent years, she has worked on shows like Daredevil, The Defenders, and The Umbrella Academy. These choices have all been for Netflix, but they’ve also all been more fantasy-based series. They’ve even been shows that are based on books or comic books. Will her future be in adapting fantasy-based works for the streaming service?
As for the main show that started it off, The Witcher season two saw some filming delays, in part because of the COVID-19 pandemic and also in part because of Henry Cavill’s season two filming injury. Those are now behind the team behind the Netflix series, which is all set to release season two on December 17, 2021.
