Henry Cavill leaves The Witcher - Liam Hemsworth takes up the role

[Julius Seeker]

The announcement comes at the same time as Cavill is announced to return to Hollywood film roles.

There was speculation from near the beginning that Netflix wasn’t going to be able to afford to keep paying Henry Cavill, but given he’s a Witcher fan, there was the expectation he’d stay on for the passion.

There’s a lot of anger toward Cavill right now, but in the end, it’s his life and career. He doesn’t need to be beholden to the sense of entitlement of the whiniest segment of the fanbase - the ones who seem to like whining about shows and films rather than enjoying them. What are they going to do, “cancel” him on Twitter?

Although I do admit it’s disappointing to see Cavill go since he played the role so well. I’m going to give Hemsworth the benefit of the doubt until I see him in the role—I’m not familiar with him, but have been a fan of Cavill since he played Brandon on The Tudors. We still get one more Witcher season with Cavill. Hemsworth takes over in the fourth.

[Eric]

There's speculation he didn't like the direction the writers were taking the character, Cavill is a huge fan of The Witcher books and video games, and as the show drifted further and further away from the source material.

Then there's this: https://www.ign.com/articles/netflix-th ... r-producer

Seems like he made a good decision.

[Julius Seeker]

Meh, I probably wouldn’t give too much weight to sensationalized Internet gossip. Especially the reason looks rather obvious, Henry Cavill’s announcement comes virtually days after announcing he’s returning to Superman after 5 years and having a crazy schedule.

The problem with the internet (to paraphrase Kevin Smith) is that it’s full of pessimists sharing what they think is inside information about films they claim to despise yet can’t stop discussing.

That’s why I tend not to pay much heed to the social media keyboard warriors, inventing all sorts of drama on baseless gossip. Even worse is the “true fan” criticism that sounds like it’s coming from the mouth of a raving derelict with severe borderline personality disorder. Now, I know some of this sounds like self-hate, because I used to be like that with video games
But I promise I’ve grown up slightly since my teen years… twenties? Or was it my thirties? Fuck I’m old.

I don’t know the reason he left for certain, but I’d guess the likely explanation is the one that’s obvious: he’s a high value film star entering his forties, and realizes more of his prime years are behind him than in front. He’s returning to a much higher paying film career while he has time, including Superman which he’s reprising after a five year absence.

Cavill also looks to still be a fan of the show as it stands. A week ago he was bragging about how awesome the action coordination was. So it sounds like he was still enjoying his time on the show.

While it’s not ideal (well, unfortunate) that not all the writers are fans of The Witcher, it hasn’t negatively impacted the quality of the show. The first two seasons were both great. The second season got a 95% on Rotten Tomatoes, although my preference is for the first — one of my alltime favourite first seasons of a show. I also thought aside from being a great adaptation, it had perhaps the most interesting structure of any season of a show, ever: I loved how they treated Geralt episodic, Yen with episode arcs, and Ciri as more the novel. I think the only season 1 of a show that compares (at least as far as my tastes go) is Westworld season 1. The important thing is that it’s doubtful Henry Cavill would have cared about this, I’m sure if that was a problem they’d have let the writer go (or shuffled him somewhere else) rather than lose their star. But pay him as much as high budget blockbuster films? Maybe if Netflix was Apple Plus they’d swing that.