It’s claimed that Henry Cavill actually left Netflix’s The Witcher over creative differences.
Saturday saw the news drop that Henry Cavill is leaving The Witcher after next year’s Season 3 and that Liam Hemsworth will be taking over the role of Geralt of Rivia, the solitary monster hunter.
It has been thought Cavill exited over recently signing for a return as Superman, and Cavill also signed on to Guy Ritchie’s WWII spy thriller, The Ministry Of Ungentlemanly Warfare with Eiza Gonzalez.
So as The Witcher films overseas and has a demanding schedule, it was just simply thought Henry is going to be too busy to continue.
However, the Redanian Intelligence fan site offers a different story.
The site actually reports they were tipped off during the filming of Season 2 that there may have been problems, but since Henry signed a new contract for Season 3, they wrote it off as just rumors.
Now that Henry has left the show, the site opens up about what they were told about creative differences between Henry Cavill and The Witcher showrunner Lauren Schmidt Hissrich.
The gist of the problems?
Henry wanted to keep Geralt close as possible to the source material, the books, but Lauren Schmidt Hissrich wanted to go in a different direction.
Henry Cavill hints at problems with The Witcher
Cavill actually hinted at problems while discussing the show in an interview last winter.
“I wanted to try and bring as much of the book’s Geralt into Season 2 as possible, and as much as the vision, the plot and storylines would allow,” he said.
The actor continued, “The toughest part for me was finding that balance between the showrunners’ vision and my love for the books, and trying to bring that Geralt to the showrunners’ vision. It’s about treading a fine line there. It’s the showrunners’ story and so it’s an adaptation. The tricky bit for me was finding Geralt from the books’ place within that and being able to serve both as much as I could.”
Cavill explained, “The things that I pushed for, it was not necessarily just more dialogue. It was bringing a more book-accurate Geralt to the screen. Because as I’m sure you know in the books, Geralt is an amateur philosopher. He’s an intellectual. He’s wise and thoughtful. Yes, he’s at times morose, morbid and snarky. But it’s important for me to have the character be three-dimensional.”
Henry added, “And it’s tricky to do, as I was saying earlier, because there’s a certain vision and there’s a certain set, storyline and plot. And so, it was about me trying to find Geralt’s place within that. All of my asks and requests were along the lines of just being faithful to the source material.”
The Witcher writer reveals writers mock and don’t like the source material
The news is interesting as recently saw a writer on The Witcher, Beau DeMayo, reveal other writers on the show actually mocked the source material – and get this – aren’t even fans (why then did Lauren Schmidt Hissrich bring them on??? ).
“My general rule was you HAD to be a fan,” said DeMayo who is now fixing Marvel’s Blade script. “No questions. I’ve been on show – namely Witcher – where some of the writers were not or actively disliked the books and games (even actively mocking 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.”
Henry exiting the series has been in the works for a while
It also appears as if Netflix and showrunner Lauren Schmidt Hissrich were recasting the role during the filming of Season 3 as the fan site says they also noticed production started following Liam Hemsworth on social media.
So if that is the case, Henry exiting the series has been in the works for a while.
The site also points out that Henry said he is capable of doing more than one project at a time.
“You’ve got to keep in mind that regardless of what movies I’ll be doing over the next few years, you can fit two projects into one year,” Cavill said back in 2019.
