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The Witcher season 5 gets disappointing release update as Netflix delays final season Netflix (winteriscoming.net)
submitted 3 months ago by to c/television@piefed.social
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[–] 63 points 3 months ago (8 children)

ratings for the show’s fourth season were down sharply, with a 50% decline in viewership. Season 4 was the first without Henry Cavill and the first for Liam Hemsworth, which likely played a role in the audience decline.

I don't have strong opinions one way or another about Liam Hemsworth's acting chops, but the show ended for me when Henry Cavill quit over "creative differences." When the famously nerdy star of a fantasy show quits after three seasons because the writers seem to have open contempt for the source material it's probably time for the audience to bail too.

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  • [–] 37 points 3 months ago

    Exactly. Liam Hemsworth is perfectly fine, generally speaking, but when Henry Cavill decides to leave a project under such circumstances, I’m quitting too.

    Apparently, 50% of the audience felt the same.

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  • [+] -12 points 3 months ago (5 children)

    I kind of got the impression that he was a dick on set and they were happy to part ways. I don't really know what Cavill's criticisms were but slavish devotion to source material would make for a terrible adaptation. Probably not a popular view online but the books are not filmable as written.

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  • [–] 19 points 3 months ago* (4 children)

    Really depends. You can twist it around the other way too. If, as multiple sources have confided, they did have contempt for the source material it isn't a stretch that they'd have no patience for Cavill's criticisms. They would have viewed Cavill as a dick for being more loyal to the author's vision. They certainly did put out that propaganda to save their own skins. And given how the quality of the show declined and viewership along with it, reality favors Cavill.

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  • [–] 2 points 3 months ago (3 children)

    Just a lead actor constantly trying to overrule the EP and writers is probably sufficiently bad on-set behaviour, but I've read other things as well. It's really only rumours anyway. Sapkowski seems totally fine with their adaptation. Plus, that Cavill dude hasn't even played Blood and Wine? Fucking tourist! (that was a joke, relax)

    I'm not exactly sure what "contempt" for the source material means here. There's some weird shit in those books that was never going to be in any adaptation. Just two examples off the top of my head:

    Triss Marigold begging Geralt to fuck her while she's shitting herself to death in a cart wasn't ever gonna make the cut. It's both gross and not really believable.

    Geralt fucking a 16-year-old Shani to then have Phillipa owl-on-in to comment on how hottt 16-year-olds are and how much hotter Yennefer would be if she was underage... is a weird scene. A scene I doubt Cavill went to bat for.

    Is not including those scenes "contempt" for the material?

    Other criticism I often see online has to do with additions to the story. Like, "the elves didn't do that in the books!" But the elves don't really do anything. There are no scenes in the books that explain the conditions of the elves. The narrator just tells you about it. Having either a text crawl or narrator explaining things are both super lame in film. "Long, long ago on a Continent far, far..." You have to show, not tell. Is that contempt? The story as written is fine for a book, but just doesn't work for film.

    Or also "Yennefer didn't do that in the books!" But:

    Yennefer is barely in the books! Geralt mostly just thinks about her all the time. But thinking isn't particularly cinematic and that character is important to the story. You want a great actor to portray her and your actors need shit to do. She can't just be a thought bubble over Geralt's head. In the third season (IIRC), Anya Chalotra would have one scene in the first episode, two brief scenes in the last episode (the first of which would be just pissing herself in a puddle), and spend the rest of the season as a jade statuette. What actor would agree to commit up to a decade of the most lucrative years of their career to your project if that's the work you're giving them? It doesn't matter in the books because Yennefer isn't under contract. And, as importantly, if she's mostly absent in the show, the bond between her, Geralt, and Ciri is totally unearned and won't make any sense to the audience.

    Again, I don't know Cavill's specific criticisms, but so many complaints I've seen online are about deviations from things that wouldn't translate to film. I think the book is written in a way that just doesn't make it easily adaptable. Unlike, say, GRRM or James S.A. Corey who both (err.. all three) seem very influenced by film such that their novels are almost laid out scene by scene. I wouldn't be surprised if they were thinking about adaptations as they were writing. I don't think Sapkowski shares that influence and if you tried to adapt it exactly, you'd make something bad.

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  • [–] 6 points 3 months ago (2 children)

    Sapkowski seems totally fine with their adaptation.

    I’m pretty sympathetic to the general point here, and I’ll even say that a lot of pretty shit (or at least slim) source material is getting adapted these days and I don’t fault TV writers one bit for not sticking to it (cough halo cough).

    That said, IIRC Sapkowski sold the game rights for a very small one time payment and remains salty about it, so it’s maybe not surprising that he’s publicly favoring the Netflix adaptation.

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  • [–] 3 points 3 months ago* (1 child)

    I think anyone would be salty if they sold the rights for a $10K flat fee and had missed out on $16M in royalties (by Sapkowski's estimate). He does seem to mostly blame himself though:

    “I was stupid enough to sell them rights [to all of my novels],” he told Eurogamer. “They offered me a percentage of their profits. I said, ‘No, there will be no profit at all — give me all my money right now! The whole amount.’ It was stupid. I was stupid enough to leave everything in their hands because I didn’t believe in their success. But who could foresee their success? I couldn’t.”

    I think he's de-salted though. They settled and renegotiated a licensing agreement a few years ago. His relationship with CDPR seems fine now, even if he remains fully committed to grumpiness:

    "The contracts between me and the game people are excellent right now. Let's hope it stays that way."

    Although CDPR's Adam Badowski says he's secretly a lovely dude:

    "He's a very intelligent guy," said Badowski, "and as a writer, he created kind of a persona. In person, he's a great guy. Very knowledgeable." In fact, Badowski says he hangs out with Sapkowski regularly: "We are friends. I visit Andrzej regularly. We go for dinner, have great conversations."

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