A Recipe for Disaster: Witcher Writers Were Actively Mocking the Books
Former producer of Netflix's The Witcher series Beau DeMayo has dropped an explosive bomb – he has revealed that some of the show's writers "actively disliked" both Andrzej Sapkowski's books and CD Projekt Red's games.
In a Q&A session on Instagram, which focused on his role as showrunner on the upcoming X-Men '97 Disney+ series the ex-producer claimed that several writers on The Witcher team actively disliked the books or games. Moreover, some of these people went as far as to "mock the source material." DeMayo said it came as a shock for him because he believed that if you work on a franchise you have to respect it and be a fan of the source material.
"It's a recipe for disaster and bad morale. Fandom as a litmus test checks egos, and makes all the long nights worth it. You have to respect the work before you're allowed to add to its legacy," he shared during the session.
Still, we have no clue if the writers are still on the team working on Season 3 of the series – the ex-producer did not name anyone in particular.
In response to DeMayo's revelation writer and producer Matthew D'Ambrosio has said DeMayo was "unceremoniously fired for being physically and emotionally abusive."
Previously, showrunner Lauren Schmidt Hissrich said that the books and short stories are important when crafting The Witcher for Netflix.
"We're all big fans of the books. We're all big fans of the video games as well, but this is solely based on the books and that's really where we drew our inspiration from – starting with the short stories."
Back in 2020, she shared some of the principles of hiring the writers for the show. In particular she said there was a need to hire both fans and people who are not.
"When writing an adaptation, are the best writers always the ones most familiar with the world?" she stated on Twitter. "Yes. And equally importantly, no. Let me back up. When you write an adaptation, you have to be familiar with the original work. Yes. Of course. The writers and staff on The Witcher had to read all of the books, and had to appreciate/enjoy the genre. But I specifically didn't seek out ten Sapkowski scholars," she went on to say.
Season 3 of The Witcher is currently in post-production and is expected to be released in summer 2023. The live-action prequel The Witcher: Blood Origin is set for a Christmas 2022 release.