Toss A Coin To Your Witcher

Movies
21

I don’t get how studios are still like “lets just hire people who hate the franchise so we can make sure to piss off the only group of people who we know will have buy in, thus destroying the inherent word of mouth marketing we could obtain, and instead create a lot of controversy from those who are the most fervent about the property.”

Meanwhile shows like The Expanse had the actual novel writers in the writer’s room as writers and producers and had such good word of mouth from fans of the books + the show that it was renewed AFTER being cancelled.

Like I get that some books/games have some pretty mid stories. And sometimes it takes some work to elevate and adapt a story to work as a show. But still to be like “we actively want people who don’t like the property we are adapting so they will be free to cannibalize it into something else” sounds like the peak of hubris.

I get to thinking that with the rise of AI generation of art and media assets, it won’t be long before a team of fans with a few retired mining rigs could instead basically adapt any book they wanted into a fully animated and acted series.

That said, as one who never read the books or played the games, I have enjoyed The Witcher TV series so it sounds like at least having some of the team making it understand the general appeal and be able to navigate the mire of adaptation somewhat competently has created a good show.

Similarly, I was not a big fan of the Halo TV show, even though some aspects I did enjoy. But knowing the book and game stories enough to know what could have been, I do feel about like how the Witcher fans must feel about the show to some degree. (I do think they fucked with the sauce a lot more on Halo than Witcher tho, since at least most agree Cavil makes a good Geralt.)

In all I wish more studios looked at adapting properties as a process of finding the eager fan writers who will do a LOT of work to make a great show, getting far more return on investment than if they find people who see a property as a vessel to tell their own story. Knowing that a lot of stories start out as independent plots and then get reskinned as branded property plots, and vise versa; I get why it doesn’t always pan out.

Still, The Expanse was an example of doing it right: taking the source material and correcting the errors through experience and an expanded perspective without changing the thesis or the methods of the original work that people were attached to. Keep the pacing and the emotional beats on the same path. It was why GoT did so well for as long as it did, until there wasn’t anything left to adapt.

I can’t think of many examples where a show or movie adapted a book or game faithfully, created by fans and/or creators of the original works, and then was a hot mess that was terrible. And I can’t think of many examples where a group of people who despised or at least were indifferent to the original work went on to make something that was completely different to the work but still made something many fans of the original, in addition to the public, still enjoyed and thought was quality despite the changes.

22

The Expanse is a very particular example though.

The authors were the former assistants of George R R Martin, and had been working with Martin as Game of Thrones was being developed as a TV show. They knew exactly what went into the process, and so were probably the most experienced people possible to do a second adaptation with another book.

And as for the content of the book, it was written from the outset to be a TV show, as far as I can tell!

23

I would not read into this one dude’s comment too much as the showrunner went out of her way to emphasize the books as source material and Sapowski gave the netflix adaption his blessing in a sense. These seems more like a comment to elevate his current project and cattily swipe at previous coworkers in a very hollywood way. Ideally yes you would have someone who has the talent and likes the source material but often in hollywood you get talent only because at the end of the day you need a competent writer for a deadline more than you need material love.

24

Those are good points. The Witcher show I think does a pretty good job of making a good TV story, and whether it’s super faithful to how the books/games go, I can’t tell, but it seems most complaints are minor and varied, some about plot differences, some about certain roles/places/factions being altered for better or worse.

I can see if you’re a studio and you have a few minor properties that you own the adaptation rights to, you’d eventually have to get anyone available to do the work. Get 'em to read the book or whatever and work a screenplay from there.

But if you’ve got a major property, a tentpole or flagship property with a significant fanbase that you plan to pour serious resources into, I would think the first step is scour the goddamn earth for some core staff who know the source. You’d want to find a few people to head the project that are genuinely excited about realizing it in a new medium the way they envisioned it in their heads. The real Ride-or-Die, “I’d do it for minimum wage because I’m so invested in seeing this done right” people.

Whenever you find a show or movie made by those kinds of people, it usually ends up doing well. Even if the return isn’t stellar, they tend to last a while in the public consciousness. The alternative is you get someone who isn’t a fan, who charges full price, gives a half-ass product, quits after season 2, and the product still doesn’t get a good financial return and it also tarnishes the property for a long time.

And further the studios don’t actually care what the content they make is, right? Like the executives largely don’t care about the plots and details of the stories that come from the teams making their content I have to imagine. I don’t think the people in charge of Netflix would know or care at all if The Witcher had stuck closer to, or strayed further from, the works that inspired them. So they shouldn’t have a big concern either way what plot pieces get used in the shows as long as the viewers keep tuning in.

So to them, why not just always pay a team of talented super fans to go HAM on their favorite property with a big budget and a small army of talent? If they need some experienced guidance, there’s plenty of pros out there who can co-direct and so-on, to make sure the product is competent and not going way out of budget, but leave the superfans to dictate story and so-on. They probably have a better chance of making something that at least a big established audience will go back to multiple times and spread via word-of-mouth for a while.

To Luke’s point, it’s true but unfortunate that The Expanse is an exceptional case. When it should be a banal everyday standard show, really. Not because I want it to be any less than it is, but I want it to be unremarkable as everything else is just as well done and competent, and involves production teams that get it, writers that are smart, producers who are also huge nerds, staff that loves the story and sets, actors that love the characters they play. That has less and less reason IMO to not be the absolute status quo for how shows get made today, but it still seems to be this shining exception and it’s sad.

25

Because genuinely talented writers within the medium of television are not actually that widely distributed and experience working within the studio/large network systems is a key selling point. Passion can be a hindrance when it comes to adaption just as much as disdain can be. You need to be willing to kill your darlings to make changes to adapt the new format, meet budget requirements, work with the existing talent you’ve already hired etc. Die-hard fans are the people least able to countenance these type of changes.