‘The Witcher: Sirens of the Deep’ Creators Explain Why They Chose 2D Magic for Their Most Ambitious Tale Yet

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‘The Witcher’ Season 4 is still some time away, but we will certainly revisit the universe soon enough through the animated film ‘The Witcher: Sirens of the Deep’ scheduled to drop this February.

The movie will be an adult-animated fantasy film set in ‘The Witcher’ world. It is directed by Kang Hei Chul and written by Mike Ostrowski and Rae Benjamin.

‘The Witcher: Sirens of the Deep’ will be available on Netflix starting February 11, 2025. The story follows Geralt, who is hired to investigate attacks in a coastal village. He gets caught up in an ancient conflict between humans and merpeople and must rely on friends, old and new, to solve the mystery before war breaks out. The movie takes place between episodes 5 and 6 of The Witcher Season 1.

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Doug Cockle will voice Geralt, Anya Chalotra and Joey Batey will return as Yennefer and Jaskier, while Christina Wren voices the new character, Essi Davis.

The upcoming project will tackle ‘A Little Sacrifice,’ one of Andrzej Sapkowski’s most ambitious stories, something the live-action series hasn’t tried. Showrunner Lauren Hissrich and co-writer Rae Benjamin explained they chose 2D animation to do the story justice. Hissrich joked, “Water is death,” emphasizing the challenges of bringing the tale to life.

We didn’t want to cheap out. Water is death, you know?

Inviting audiences into a fully conceived merworld, inhabited by merpeople who speak their own mer language, is a tall order, and the team behind The Witcher’s latest offering saw it as an opportunity to push the limits on what we’ve seen of The Witcher world before.

The team behind ‘The Witcher’s’ latest anime used animation to fully explore a unique underwater world with merpeople speaking their own language. Co-writer Rae Benjamin explained that the animated format allowed them to create merpeople that look completely different from the usual human-with-a-tail depiction.

Without budget or visual effects limits, they aimed to make the merworld as bold and original as possible.

Being that this was animated, we took full advantage of making these merpeople feel different. They’re not your traditional depiction of mermaids – you know, a human-looking person with a tail. We wanted to make something that you haven’t necessarily seen in other movies and TV shows, and really make it as heightened as possible. There aren’t any budget constraints, there aren’t any visual effects constraints. We wanted to dive into that world and make it as unique as possible.

‘The Witcher: Sirens of the Deep’ lands on Netflix on February 11. Have something to add? Let us know in the comments below!

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