Could The Witcher become as big as Game of Thrones? The stars react

There are a lot of upcoming shows looking to pick up where Game of Thrones left off, both in terms of giving audiences their fix of wild fantasy worlds and hopefully — for the studios behind them — in popularity. One of the leading contenders is Netflix’s The Witcher, based on the books by Andrzej Sapkowski. The first season of the show is set to drop later this year, and so far it’s looking pretty promising:

The Witcher is about a professional monster hunter named Geralt of Rivia (Henry Cavill), who wanders the world of men looking for work. The show will also feature big roles for his protégé Ciri (Freya Allan) and on-again, off again sorceress love interest Yennefer (Anya Chalotra).  It’s impossible to say whether it can become as popular as Game of Thrones, but I think it at least has a good chance of gaining a fervent fan base.

And if it does blow up, what would that mean for its cast members, who other than Cavill are largely unknown to audiences? “That means my life would blow up as well, wouldn’t it?” Chalotra told ComicBook.com at the most recent San Diego Comic-Con. “Yeah. You know, I’m taking it moment to moment and this already has been very overwhelming. It’s very scary. This today [press at SDCC] was scary. But then you meet the fans and you realize why you’re doing it and suddenly you go ‘ah, they’re on your side.'”

Well…there are ways the tide the turn, but Chalotra probably shouldn’t worry about that. Here’s hoping The Witcher proves worthy of intense interest from fans.

Unlike Chalotra, Henry Cavill is already an established name and is probably used to fan attention — that’s just a thing that’ll happen when you play Superman. Even so, the actor is still clearly willing to mix it up with the fans, as when he commented on this drawing of Geralt by DC Comics COO Jim Lee:

“Looking forward to Henry Cavill as Geralt on the show as well!” Lee wrote. Feel like I should get a copy of the novel too.” A few comments down, Cavill responded:

"Thank you, Sir! I highly recommend both books and games."

Cavill’s enthusiasm for the series is pretty well known, so I’m not surprised to see him stump for all things Witcher-related. He’ll have more to celebrate soon, since it sounds like CD Projekt Red, who make the Witcher video games, is moving towards a “dual-franchise model” where it works on Witcher games at the same time as it works on games in the proprietary Cyberpunk 2077 franchise. In short, there’s lots of new Witcher content on the way.

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h/t CBR