By After several months of intense filming, the hardworking cast and crew of Netflix’s The Witcher are beginning to bid farewell to the city they’ve temporarily called home. If we didn’t already suspect it, Adam Levy (who is playing the wise druid Mousesack) posting from The Witcher’s wrap party at the Hotsy Totsy bar in Budapest and captioning it “celebrating the wrap of another chunk of this epic journey” confirmed as much. There were strong hunches based on Production Weekly updates and crew members mentioning that filming would likely wrap in May or June as far back as November of 2018. All the information has checked out, and now seven months later, filming is coming to an end.
Director Charlotte Brändström, who’s been spotted filming in the Grand Canaries and Hungary over the past few months, posted a shot of Budapest from an airplane on April 27. The caption “Goodbye Budapest…” suggests she’s wrapped filming for season one. The next time we see Brändström’s name will likely be on the title cards for episodes five and six when the first season drops on Netflix this fall.
On April 29, actor Adam Levy followed suit, posting an Instagram story captioned “the mouse is wrapped. thank you #thewitchernetflix”. As previously noted, Adam Levy attended The Witcher’s wrap party on April 24. Many wondered at the time if filming for the season had finished, but now we know that while it was indeed a wrap party, the cameras hadn’t yet stopped rolling.
Royce Pierreson, who’s playing the sorcerer Istredd, wrapped two days later on May 1. As per his Instagram, he wrote: “That’s a wrap for me on #thewitcher sad to be leaving everybody but so proud of what we’ve achieved.” The actor had been back and forth from set since December of 2018.
Additionally, a camera crew member is counting down the days until filming wraps. According to a recent post of theirs, the crew finishes filming by May 4. We can assume that when the crew goes home, that’s it. Lights out. Until then, a few stragglers remain to see through the week; actors Anna Shaffer (Triss), Therica Wilson-Read (Sabrina), and Shaun Dooley have been spotted on location (Dooley has since wrapped as of May 3). Executive producer Tomasz Bagiński might be around set quite a bit longer, having recently commented on his Facebook page, “I’m still cursed away [in Budapest] for another month.”
As the wise saying goes: something ends, something begins. This phase of production is wrapping, but there’s plenty more to come. Crafting a television series isn’t just shooting the film; it’s working straight through the months until release. Expect to see members of the cast filtering in and out of sound booths to record ADR (Automated Dialog Replacement) and marketing beginning to ramp up as popular conventions take place over summer (San Diego and New York Comic Con). All the while, special effects engineers will be toiling behind the scenes to make everything look awesome. The fun isn’t over yet.
