The Witcher: Sirens of the Deep, the second animated film set in Netflix‘s Witcher-Verse, won’t be releasing this year after all.
Announced in a Geeked Week 2024 video starring voice actor Doug Cockle, who reprises his iconic role as Geralt of Rivia from The Witcher videogame series in the forthcoming film, Sirens of the Deep won’t arrive before 2024 ends. Instead, it’ll now aim to cast a spell on viewers worldwide on February 11, 2025.
The movie’s official release date was revealed alongside a new clip, which shows Geralt and Jaskier, another fan-favorite character from The Witcher, enjoying a meal by a campfire as they discuss Essi, a rival bard and friend of Jaskier’s.
Sirens of the Deep was expected to launch on the world’s best streaming service sometime in late 2024. Indeed, Netflix said as much upon The Witcher: Sirens of the Deep‘s official unveiling last November, but the streaming titan has, for reasons unknown, handed the adult animated flick a revised launch date.
For anyone who needs to know, Sirens of the Deep is based on ‘A Little Sacrifice’, a short story companion piece to Andrzej Sapkowski’s The Witcher book series that expands on Geralt’s adventures across The Continent. Per a Netflix press blast that was released alongside the movie’s official announcement in late 2023, it’ll see the famous monster hunter “investigate a series of attacks in a seaside village” before Geralt “finds himself drawn into a centuries-old conflict between humans and merpeople”. It’ll be up to everyone’s favorite mutant, and allies old and new, to prevent all-out war erupting between the land-dwelling and sea-faring kingdoms.
Joining Cockle on the voice cast roster is Christina Wren (Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice), who’ll voice Essi. Joey Batey and Anya Chalotra, who play Jaskier and Yennefer in Netflix’s live-action take on The Witcher novels, will voice their respective characters in Sirens of the Deep, too.
A temporary hiatus for Netflix’s flagship fantasy franchise
With The Witcher: Sirens of the Deep not due to launch until early next year, 2024 will be the first proper year where Netflix won’t release a new Witcher-Verse project.
Indeed, since The Witcher‘s first season debuted in late 2019, Netflix’s live-action and animated retellings of Sapkowski’s adored book series has always delivered something new for new and established fans to enjoy and/or bristle with frustration over. The aforementioned debut of one of the best Netflix shows notwithstanding, 2021 saw The Witcher season 2 and The Witcher: Nightmare of the Wolf unleashed on the world, 2022 gave us the critically-panned The Witcher: Blood Origin, and 2023 saw fans bid farewell to Henry Cavill after his final outing as Geralt in The Witcher season 3.
2020 was the only other year when a new Witcher production didn’t see the light of day, but there were mitigating circumstances, with the pandemic heavily impacting season 2’s development. If not for Covid-19, then, Netflix likely would’ve released a new season or standalone production, every year for the past five years.
As it stands, with Sirens of the Deep not releasing until February 2025, The Witcher season 4 in the middle of its development cycle, and The Rats‘ live-action spin-off being cancelled, there’ll be no Continent-based jaunts for viewers to check out. Still, with The Witcher suffering from diminishing returns on the critical and commercial front, taking a year off may be a blessing in disguise. After all, thanks to the 2023 Hollywood strikes, Marvel was forced to reduce its output in 2024, and look at how the MCU’s flagging fortunes have turned around as a result. Why can’t Netflix’s Witcher-Verse enjoy a similar renaissance period in 2025 with Sirens of the Deep and, if it’s ready, The Witcher season 4?
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tom.power@futurenet.com (Tom Power)
