by Thinus Ferreira
The Witcher prequel series on Netflix is casting, Game of Thrones will chronicle a new Westeros war, there will be familiar and new characters like Sauron in Amazon Prime Video's The Lord of the Rings series, and the sorting hat might be dusted off to sort a new class in a Harry Potter TV series on HBO Max.
In an announcement, Netflix said that Jodie Turner-Smith has been cast in the role of Éile in the upcoming series The
Witcher: Blood Origin spin-off.
This limited, 6-episode, live-action series is set "in an elven world" 1 200 years before the events depicted in The Witcher, which is busy filming its second season in the United Kingdom with Henry Cavill in the lead role as Geralt of Rivia.
According to Netflix, The Witcher: Blood Origin will "tell a story lost to time – the creation of the first prototype Witcher, and the events that lead to the pivotal 'conjunction of the spheres', when the worlds of monsters, men, and elves merged to become one".
Netflix's character description states that Jodie Turner-Smith will "play Éile, an elite warrior blessed with the voice of a goddess, who has left her clan and position as Queen’s guardian to follow her heart as a nomadic musician. A grand reckoning on the continent forces her to return to the way of the blade in her quest for vengeance and redemption".
Declan de Barra serves as executive producer and showrunner of The Witcher: Blood Origin with Lauren Schmidt Hissrich, creator of The Witcher series, as executive producer, together with Tomek Baginski and Jarek Sawko from Platige Films.
Besides this limited spin-off, Netflix is also working on an animated film titled The Witcher: Nightmare Of The Wolf, that will tell the origin story of Geralt’s Witcher mentor Vesemir.
More Hogwarts and Westeros
As the video streaming wars continue to ramp up and studios are scouring their intellectual property catalogues that they could potentially build out into new content to set them apart and lure viewers, the Hollywood trades are reporting that WarnerMedia executives, in early discussions, are thinking about developing a live-action Harry Potter TV series for its HBO Max video streaming service.
In an official statement, Warner Bros. and HBO Max say that "there is no Harry Potter series in development at the studio or on the streaming platform".
Obviously, this statement is technically true - a series isn't in actual "development" - but it is only true insofar as everything that Professor Albus Dumbledore ever said to Harry Potter was technically true, although it wasn't at times all of the truth that was available.
According to the Hollywood reports, HBO Max and WarnerMedia execs have been and are talking about the possibility of developing a Harry Potter TV series and they see "expanding the world of Harry Potter as a top priority", similar to the way in which HBO's Game of Thrones fantasy series is being expanded with several prequel spin-off series.
Besides the already-announced House of the Dragon series that will debut in 2022 and that will chronicle the start of Westeros' Targaryen civil war, HBO is now also developing a George R.R. Martin Game of Thrones spinoff book series as a new Tales of Dunk and Egg TV series.
This spinoff drama series, with hour-long episodes and set 90 years before the existing TV series, will revolve around the adventures of Ser Duncan the Tall (known as Dunk) and a very young Aegon V Targaryen (known as Egg).
HBO Max is not available in South Africa or sub-Saharan Africa and WarnerMedia doesn't want to talk about a possible launch date for the country or the continent.
However, last week Christina Sulebakk, the boss of WarnerMedia's HBO Max for the Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) region,
announced her senior executive team specifically for this region - a strong indication that HBO Max will eventually make its way to South Africa similar to Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and Apple TV+.
A Sauron origin story
Amazon Prime Video has released an official description for the New Zealand-filmed Lord of the Rings prequel TV series, confirming that it will be set during the Second Age of Middle-earth, will include the island of Númenor and the elf-capital Lindon as locations, and that viewers will see "characters, both familiar and new" which means a young Sauron.
The as-yet-untitled Lord of the Rings series, the world's new most expensive TV series ever, is only expected to be released on Amazon Prime Video in late-2021, or during 2022 with Amazon that hasn't given a definite release date yet.
While the prequel series takes place thousands of years before the events depicted in The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit films and books, several of the inhabitants of this world have long lifespans like the dwarfs who live for several centuries and elves who are immortal.
According to Amazon Prime Video's new official synopsis for the series, "Amazon Studios' forthcoming series brings to screens for the very first time the heroic legends of the fabled Second Age of Middle-earth's history".
"This epic drama is set thousands of years before the events of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, and will take viewers back to an era in which great powers were forged, kingdoms rose to glory and fell to ruin, unlikely heroes were tested, hope hung by the finest of threads, and the greatest villain that ever flowed from Tolkien’s pen threatened to cover all the world in darkness."
"Beginning in a time of relative peace, the series follows an ensemble cast of characters, both familiar and new, as they confront the long-feared re-emergence of evil to Middle-earth."
"From the darkest depths of the Misty Mountains, to the majestic forests of the elf-capital of Lindon, to the breathtaking island kingdom of Númenor, to the furthest reaches of the map, these kingdoms and characters will carve out legacies that live on long after they are gone."
The Second Age is of course when Sauron rose to power and corrupted the human leaders living on Númenor, leading to the fall of the Nine Kings.
The series cast includes Robert Aramayo, Owain Arthur, Nazanin Boniadi, Tom Budge and Morfydd Clark as a young Galadriel.
