Netflix released a full trailer for The Witcher: Nightmare of the Wolf on Wednesday, revealing much more about the animated prequel movie. Nightmare of the Wolf is an anime-style film set hundreds of years before The Witcher itself, centering around Geralt’s mentor Vesemir in his youth. Now, fans can finally see how he will look, and hear him voiced by actor Theo James.
The new Nightmare of the Wolf teaser introduces fans to a very different kind of Witcher from Geralt — cocky and fun-loving, young Vesemir does not seem to brood in the way the White Wolf does. The teaser includes some voiceover at last, and at the same time, Netflix has announced the main cast members of the movie. Castlevania‘s Theo James voices Vesemir, Sherlock‘s Lara Pulver voices Tetra, The Hobbit‘s Graham McTavish voices Deglan and Battlestar Galactica‘s Mary McDonnell voices Lady Zerbst.
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Nightmare of the Wolf is scheduled to premiere on Monday, Aug. 23, but these and any other details we know about it have come out remarkably close to the premiere date. The movie was announced back in January of 2020, and fans were told only that it would be a prequel about Vesemir before he met Geralt. Until this month, fans had not seen any clips or even stills from the production, nor learned the release date.
Nightmare of the Wolf is a momentous step for the Witcher franchise in many respects. Not only will it be the first experiment with animation, but it will also be the first production to add brand new material to the canon. Up until now, the main Netflix original series and the video games have drawn all their story material from The Witcher Saga books by Andrzej Sapkowski — available here in print, digital and audiobook formats.
Hopes are high that these new additions will go over well, especially since another spinoff is also on the way. The Witcher: Blood Origin is a six-part live-action limited series set thousands of years before The Witcher, during the magical event known as the Conjunction of the Spheres. This is when monsters entered The Continent, and Witchers were created to combat them.
Both of these spinoffs are being executive produced by The Witcher showrunner Lauren Schmidt Hissrich. They highlight Netflix’s sprint to cash in on the growing demand for fantasy series adaptations, which arguably started with Game of Thrones and continues to dominate many streaming services’ production schedules.
The Witcher: Nightmare of the Wolf premieres on Monday, Aug. 23 on Netflix. The Witcher Season 2 follows on Dec. 17, 2021. There is no release date in place yet for Blood Origin.
