The Witcher on Netflix is big—maybe its biggest season-one series ever—and so it's no surprise that The Witcher season 2 is already in the works. But that's not all: A Writers Guild of America West listing, spotted by Witcher fan site Redanian Intelligence, indicates that Netflix is also working on a standalone animated film called The Witcher: Nightmare of the Wolf.
Shortly after that WGA listing was found, Netflix confirmed the existence of an "anime film" from the live-action show's creator and the studio that animated Legend of Korra:
The rumors are true, a new Witcher story is in the works! The anime film, The Witcher: Nightmare of the Wolf, will take us back to a new threat facing the Continent. Brought to you by the Witcher team @LHissrich and @BeauDeMayo, and Studio Mir the studio behind Legend of Korra.January 22, 2020
The tweet contains all the information revealed so far, which obviously isn't much. Beau DeMayo wrote the Betrayer Moon episode of The Witcher series ("a great episode," we said in our recap, "with strong horror elements, some wonderfully gruesome monster design, and a palpable, rumbling tension throughout") and the presence of showrunner Hissrich has to be encouraging.
The South Korea-based Studio Mir may be best known for The Legend of Korra animated series on Nickelodeon, and more recently has worked on Voltron: Legendary Defender, Lego Elves: Secrets of Elvendale, and Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeats for Netflix.
"Take us back to a new threat," as Netflix said in the tweet, is weird wording. But it may simply reflect the time-hopping nature of the live-action show's first season, which is easier to follow with Netflix's timeline map.
There's no word yet on when Nightmare of the Wolf will be out, or whether Henry Cavill and other members of the series cast will be involved. I hope they are: I had doubts about Cavill's ability to really convey the rugged character of Geralt, but he's really killing it, including in the voice department, which draws inspiration from Witcher videogame voice actor Doug Cockle. An anime released while The Witcher series is still active, but with a different voice for Geralt, just wouldn't seem right. (That is, unless they can get Cockle himself for the job, in which case, sorry, Henry. Go do another Mission Impossible or something.)
