'The Witcher' Is Getting an Anime Movie on Netflix Now

By Mike Redmond | TV | January 22, 2020 |

By Mike Redmond | TV | January 22, 2020 |

Despite touting some, uh, very questionable metrics in a letter to shareholders, Netflix is certainly putting its money where its mouth is by leaning hard into the success of The Witcher. Hot on the heels of news that the series is the streaming platform’s biggest debut ever, io9 has confirmed a Redanian Intelligence report that a Witcher anime film has been greenlit, and everything about the creative teams involved sounds goddamn great. I’ll have this.

io9 has confirmed that Netflix is currently developing The Witcher: Nightmare of the Wolf, a standalone anime film that is designed to expand the world of Netflix’s series. According to the plot description, the movie “explores a powerful new threat facing the Continent.”

Nightmare of the Wolf is being helmed by The Witcher showrunner Lauren Schmidt Hissrich and writer Beau DeMayo, who also worked on the first season. Studio Mir, the Korean animation company behind The Legend of Korra and Netflix’s Voltron: Legendary Defender, will be the folks creating it. No other details are available yet, including whether Henry Cavill, Anya Chalotra, and others will be reprising their roles in the movie.

If you somehow haven’t heard me say it a thousand times already, Netflix’s Voltron series is practically a masterpiece. I’m not a huge anime guy, but my fondest memories until the day I die will be binge-watching each new season with my son and just the two of us being blown away by the story and visuals. It is a f*cking delight. So the fact that the studio behind Voltron is working with the showrunner of The Witcher has my full attention.

As of right now, there’s no release date, but the general consensus seems to be that the anime film will hit sometime before the second season of The Witcher drops in Spring 2021 to tide fans over, which is a smart move. Not only did the show do supposedly bonkers numbers for Netflix, but following its release, game sales for The Witcher 3 shot through the roof and Orbit Books just went back to the printers after demand for the novels saw a similar spike. We all snarked about it, but Netflix might have actually found its Game of Thrones albeit with the added suspense of knowing it could be cancelled at any second after the third season. Whee!

In the meantime, getting the scoop on the anime film shows that Redanian Intelligence is a fan site to keep an eye on, and more importantly, I hope they’re very right about this particular item.

Redanian Investigation: we have reasons to believe that Kristofer Hivju may have been cast in #TheWitcher. We explain why we think so.https://t.co/9LY9hXenOV

— Redanian Intelligence: The Witcher (@RedanianIntel) January 17, 2020

Let the man drink from a giant’s titty, you cowards!