By Originally announced as a six-part limited series, The Witcher: Blood Origin starring Michelle Yeoh was partly reshot, recut and rebranded as a four-part event series, with two episodes fewer than intended. Many wondered what was cut and how much footage are we actually getting. The Witcher showrunner Lauren Hissrich detailed some of these changes during a new interview with Naekranie.pl.
Some slower parts were cut from The Witcher: Blood Origin
Speaking to Naekranie, Lauren Hissrich explained some of the changes they decided to make when they got to post-production. “I am 100% happy with what we’re showing. We did make changes throughout the process. It started out as six episodes, we realized very quickly that we wanted it to be faster and snappier.“
She continued: “It’s a road story of seven people who meet up and journey to Xintrea, so it didn’t make sense to make a lot of pauses in those stories. Declan had written honestly some beautiful scenes of people around campfires and sort of slowing down, but once we got into editorial“, she explained, “it was really really clear that we needed to keep the momentum moving so that you can actually sit and watch in one go.“
Hissrich revealed another aspect of the cut and re-edited content: “Originally we met the characters in a much more slow way, sort of every episode gathered one new character, but we realized that these characters were strongest when we were seeing them working as a team […] and we didn’t have the whole team assembled until much later in the show and we realized we wanted to speed that up.“
This is an interesting insight into balancing dialogue and character exploration during slower scenes that involves a group of characters with the show’s intended pacing, since this may end up being a blueprint for Geralt’s Hansa when it eventually forms in The Witcher Season 4. Hopefully, not too many slower Hansa moments will be cut.
As to the runtime of The Witcher: Blood Origin, CrypticHDQuality reports that the entire series will have 196 minutes total. That means roughly 49 minutes per episode on average. That is a little below what we have come to expect from The Witcher, but a fairly common runtime for such cable TV series as Better Call Saul or The Walking Dead.
Season 3 of The Witcher is in post-production for a Summer 2023 release. The live-action prequel The Witcher: Blood Origin has been set a Christmas 2022 release. Stay tuned to Redanian Intelligence and do pop into our Discord server to join in on The Witcher conversation.
