Fans of The Witcher had two long years to wait between the finale of its premiere season and the debut of season 2, and it seems that absence does make the heart grow fonder as over 2 billion minutes of the show were watched in the first week of the new episodes’ arrival. A new report by Variety detailed how The Witcher’s second run of eight episodes in December saw the show build up over 2.2 million minutes of viewership during its first week on release, making it easily one of the biggest shows of the month.
After spending years in the doldrums, high fantasy came live action films with a vengeance twenty years ago when Peter Jackson pulled off one of the biggest feats in cinema at the time by bringing J.R.R. Tolkein’s Lord of The Rings to the big screen. Since then, the fantasy genre has seen a huge resurgence that has led to the likes of Game of Thrones become ratings winners, and money that would have previously been hard to get suddenly become available to projects like Amazon’s Wheel of Time and Lord of The Rings series, as well as The Witcher on Netflix.
While the final season of Game of Thrones didn’t bring in the level of viewers that previous seasons managed, it seems that viewers were just ready for something new from the fantasy genre, and The Witcher and Wheel of Time have both achieved that, having held Top Ten streaming positions for a whole month or more from their initial date of release. While the Wheel of Time, based on the much older novels of Robert Jordan, is mostly popular with old viewers, The Witcher has tapped into a younger market, with almost two thirds of its viewership in the 18-34 year old demographic, which is most likely a result of the popular video game series that came before it, all of which is based on the novels of Andrzej Sapkowski.
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Netflix Are Turning The Witcher Into Their Go To Fantasy Universe.
The Witcher’s second season headed into production in early 2020 following the success of the series’ debut on Netflix towards the end of 2019. After substantial delays in filming due to Covid restrictions, positive Covid tests among the crew and an on-set injury sustained by lead Henry Cavill, the production was finally able to wrap up in April 2021. While fans awaited the new season, Netflix released an anime prequel movie, The Witcher: Nightmare of the Wolf, which promised a whole new arm of the franchise to come as the streamer began to develop a number of spin-offs that will continue to keep the flagship series in the public eye and at the top of streaming charts for as long as possible.
While a third season of The Witcher is already heading into production, live-action prequel series The Witcher: Blood Origin recently released a trailer, and work is underway on another anime movie as well as a “child-friendly” spin-off, although it is yet to be seen what that entails considering the very adult nature of the series. Either way, with Amazon’s Wheel of Time and Lord of The Rings bringing the big name fantasy projects to small screens, Netflix seems to be more than capable of holding their own with the Witcherverse. The Witcher’s first two seasons are available now on Netflix, along with anime movie, Nightmare of the Wolf.