Recastings happen in Hollywood all the time, but very rarely do they involve the star of one of the most popular shows on the biggest streaming service in the business dropping out to be replaced by an actor the fans have made abundantly clear they do not support. As a result, Netflix has a massive problem on its hands when it comes to The Witcher.
For a lot of viewers, there’s no point whatsoever in continuing on with the small screen adventures revolving around Geralt of Rivia without Cavill in the lead role, something that’s been made perfectly clear by the demands for The Witcher to be canceled altogether instead of having Liam Hemsworth step in as a leading man nobody seems to want.
To make things even more transparent to the bigwigs at the company, a petition demanding that the entire creative team gets fired so that Cavill can return to the Continent is fast closing in on 150,000 on Change.org, which means the campaign has increased its support almost tenfold in less than a week.
While petitions and online movements rarely yield tangible rewards, if we look at it on a macro level, it’s bad news for Netflix. The Witcher is now all-but-guaranteed to suffer a huge drop-off in viewing figures whenever season 4 arrives, while Hemsworth is now placed into the unfortunate position of inheriting a role he auditioned for several years back that he’s clearly eager to play, but the actor will no doubt find himself completely and utterly unable to stem the overwhelming tides of discontent.