By The second live-action spinoff of Netflix’s The Witcher has been on our radars since November of last year, even though the streamer still hasn’t made an official announcement. Nevertheless, we kept hearing new things about it. And now, it seems, the production for it is over, but much sooner than expected.
Rats only filmed for two months
We’ve learned that after approximately two months of filming, production for Rats codenamed ‘Riff Raff‘ has wrapped on July 1, 2023.
This is unexpected and quite strange as initially, industry insider Daniel RPK reported that filming would take place over 5-6 months, from April to September 2023. Instead, filming took place over just May and June.
We’ve also heard at least initially, Rats was most likely supposed to be an 8-episode series. Two months is way too short for eight episodes. More than twice as short compared to what was initially planned.
The logical conclusion is that something changed along the way, not unlike Blood Origin. That said, Blood Origin was cut short in post-production, while it looks like Rats filmed the version that was already shortened.
At the moment, we don’t know what Rats has become. It’s possible that it is now 3-4 episodes, but we also wouldn’t rule out the possibility of Rats becoming a feature film instead.
Cast and filming of Rats
As far as we know, throughout all of the filming all six members of the Rats have been present. They are pictured above: Ben Radcliffe (Giselher), Christelle Elwin (Mistle), Fabian McCallum (Kayleigh), Aggy K. Adams (Iskra), Juliette Alexandra (Reef), Connor Crawford (Asse).
Dolph Lundgren (Brehen) has also been filming for most of the duration of this production. Freya Allan, however, hasn’t participated in this project to the best of our knowledge, so we wouldn’t expect a Ciri cameo.
Filming for Rats took place in Cape Town Film Studios as well as on locations outside Cape Town. Here’s a selection of some behind-the-scenes photos from Rats:
Rats logline: “Six teenage thieves must rely on their criminal skills as they plan the biggest heist of their careers against the most dangerous crime ring in the kingdom.”
The project was created by The Witcher writer and producer Haily Hall, who wrote episodes 106, 205 and 303 of the main series. Mairzee Almas (The Sandman, Shadow and Bone) was on board as director.
The Witcher Season 4 is in production for a 2025 release. Andrzej Sapkowski’s new Witcher book has a planned Winter 2024/2025 release with The Witcher: Sirens of the Deep anime set for a late 2024 release as well.
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