Unless you were living under a rock for the majority of the holiday season, you’ve probably heard of Netflix’s The Witcher; the streaming giant’s adaptation of Andrzej Sapkowski’s fantasy series of books. Even though it only premiered a couple of weeks ago, the show has taken the world by storm. It’s currently one of the company’s highest-rated originals on IMDb and on a global scale, it’s even surpassed the popularity of Stranger Things.
Needless to say, it’s clear that the series is poised to become a tentpole franchise for Netflix, and with plenty of source material to mine from, the showrunners and creative team have a lot of narratives to adapt going forward. With the franchise’s popularity on the rise, however, some have begun to wonder just how much its main star raked in for his work on the first season.
While he’s best known for playing Superman in the DCEU, Henry Cavill returned to the small screen to portray Geralt of Rivia and as VGR reports, he was compensated fairly well for his work on the debut season. For each of the first eight episodes, he was paid $400,000, which brings his total earnings to $3.2 million. While this pales in comparison to Norman Reedus’ $1 million per episode on The Walking Dead, it’s still a good chunk of change for the first season of a show that’s adapted from a niche book series.
Thankfully, fans of both the novels and The Witcher video games have helped to balloon the series’ popularity, and with a second season being greenlit already (and a rumored third on the way), we wouldn’t be surprised if Cavill got a healthy pay increase moving forward.