By Something ends, something begins! Henry Cavill and the rest of the team have wrapped filming on Season 2 of The Witcher, but Netflix’s next Witcher project is already well on its way: The Witcher: Blood Origin, a six-part live action spinoff series, starring Jodie Turner-Smith and Laurence O’Fuarain as the two main leads. Today we have a few other updates, rumors and speculations about the prequel to share with you!
Filming: Possible return to the Canary Islands
As it was known for a long time, filming for The Witcher: Blood Origin is set to begin in May 2021 and wrap in September, provided there are no delays.
While we expect the majority of filming to take place in the UK and more specifically the already familiar to us Arborfield Studios, we now also know that the team may be planning a stay on the Canary Islands, the place of some of season one’s most memorable vistas. This news comes courtesy of industry website Production Weekly, which is as reliable as it gets when it comes to production updates.
With Covid around, we have to be careful to make any definitive statements on possible filming locations. You may recall, that The Witcher was originally planning to film season two in multiple countries such as Slovakia, the Czech Republic, and Scotland, but was forced to remain inside the borders of England due to the pandemic.
Still, the January 2021 entry for Blood Origin in Production Weekly did not yet include the Canary Islands, so this was most certainly a recent addition and steps were being recently taken to make this happen.
We’ll just have to be patient and hope for the best! The Canary Islands would certainly provide a spectacular backdrop for the Continent. Once again!
Directors: One returning, one new?
As mentioned The Witcher: Blood Origin will have six episodes, which showrunner Declan De Barra recently teased as follows:
This of course begs the question: Who will be the directors? We did some background and activity checks and can share two candidates that are very likely in our opinion.
First, we believe that Sarah O’Gorman, director of episodes three and four of The Witcher Season 2 will stay on board for The Witcher: Blood Origin. She previously directed episodes on series such as Jamestown, The Last Kingdom, and Cursed and her familiarity with the world of The Witcher would certainly be advantageous.
Second, there are also several factors pointing towards an involvement of director and writer Vicky Jewson, who is known for productions such as the romantic comedy Lady Godiva, the action movie Born of War, and most recently the Netflix original Close. To be clear, we haven’t been able to confirm this news yet, but she’s a very likely candidate based on what we learned.
Irrespective of whether O’Gorman and Jewson are indeed part of the Blood Origin directors team, there may be a third director. At least if we’re assuming the series will keep to the ‘one-director-per-two-episodes’ formula of the main Witcher show. Otherwise, the six episodes could be split between two directors with each directing three.
Crew: A core team of Witcher veterans
At this stage, we can only make assumptions about the production value of Blood Origins, but it’s a promising sign that most of the core crew of The Witcher will also their work on the spinoff series. Executive producers Tomek Baginski, Jason F. Brown, Sean Daniel, and Jarek Sawko are all on board, alongside The Witcher showrunner Lauren Hissrich, serving in the same capacity.
Andrew Laws, The Witcher‘s lead production designer will once again be the man responsible for the overall creature concept and franchise design. Sean Guest, first assistant director on The Witcher will also stay in the same role.
With just one month left until filming starts, we expect word on The Witcher: Blood Origin very soon. Stay tuned for more updates!
