“The Witcher” executive producer Tomek Baginski finds himself in hot water with fans after he blamed appeasing American audiences for a simplified third season of the sci-fi series in a recent interview.
“In other words: ‘we compromised the quality of the product, because we only really care about making profit,’” one fan wrote on the Netflix show’s Reddit forum alongside others critiquing Baginski’s comments. “Always money before creativity with these people.”
Many fans of “The Witcher” were less than pleased by the third installment’s dumbed-down plot that strayed from the original source material from author Andrzej Sapkowski — changes that Baginski said were “necessary” to reach a larger audience.
“When a series is made for a huge mass of viewers, with different experiences, from different parts of the world, and a large part of them are Americans, these simplifications not only make sense, they are necessary,” Baginski said in an interview with Polish website Wyborcza, as translated by Redanian Intelligence. It’s painful for us, and for me too, but the higher level of nuance and complexity will have a smaller range, it won’t reach people. Sometimes it may go too far, but we have to make these decisions and accept them.”
While both parts of “The Witcher” Season 3 debuted to the top stop on Netflix’s most-watched TV lists in the week following their release, concerns of lacking viewership for this season are tied to the disappointing season for many fans and Baginski.
“This doesn’t make sense,” another fan noted on the forum. “If he says they dumbed down the show to reach a larger audience, then the viewership should increase if he was correct. The fact that the viewership decreased and people complained about how dumb the show was means that they underestimated their audience and shouldn’t have dumbed it down at all.”
Several fans used “Game of Thrones” as an example to showcase that detail-oriented storylines don’t necessarily correlate with lower viewership, as the “complex and nuanced show” managed to score big through its eight-season run, with its finale marking the biggest single telecast in HBO history with 19.3 million viewers.
“‘Game of Thrones’ was probably the biggest cult TV phenomenon of the last 20 years and it was extremely heavy, convoluted, fantasy fiction,” the user pointed out. “Why in the world would producers think turning the Witcher in to a more shitty CW esque fantasy show be a better option?”
“The Witcher” Season 3 is now streaming on Netflix.
