The executive producer on Netflix’s The Witcher has blamed American audiences and social media sites such as TikTok for…
Look at this clown! First, they came out saying they weren’t even fans of the material. You have Henry Cavil in the lead role who is a super fan of the source materials arguing with you and the writers about the show. And then you finish it off by blaming the audience for your decisions. Mind you, the audience you have ultimately attracted is largely influenced by the decisions you have made throughout the production of YOUR show. The audience didn’t make this show, YOU did
Is this the same person? This is just an executive producer, not the writer or show runner.
Pretty funny to call out someone for not reading something while simultaneously not reading the article to know who it is you’re even talking about.
If you’re the executive producer, it’s your fault that your team members fucked it up. If you cannot find a competent writer to properly express nuance on the screen, it’s still your fault. You hired the wrong person to adapt the books. You are the boss, the final say, the one-ass-to-kick when things go wrong. The Witcher is not some nuanced story about regional distinctions in low-visibility communities told in short form, which seems to be his only acclaimed experience, followed by several production failures.
This entire interview comes down to “those lazy zoomers don’t know how to appreciate good film.” From the description of his past, massive failures it appears to be a problem with his process and ability, not an audience problem.
by several production failures
Hehe savage
If you’re AN executive producer:
If you’re the executive producer, it’s your fault that your team members fucked it up.
Again though, that’s not true.
The Television producer hierarchy has Showrunner at the top, that would be Lauren Schmidt Hissrich. Tomasz Baginski was just an EP on 16 of the episodes, so would not have been in charge of determining the overall series plot.
This entire interview comes down to “those lazy zoomers don’t know how to appreciate good film.”
Yeah, his complaints are that Young Adult material is simplified to be able to hold their attention, that’s not controversial, that’s not new, that’s been the case for literally ever. It’s why book stores have Young Adult fiction separate from more complex and heady adult fiction.
The Witcher found success on TV as a YA show and that has forced them to simplify the plot, something one of the producers didn’t appreciate.
Yeah, right.
I don’t think any American was like “wow I want a shittier version of the Witcher to watch, that’d be sooo great!”
American test audiences literally said that for I Am Legend which combined with studios unopinionated cowardice caused them to ruin the ending, amongst many, many, many other times that test audiences have given bad artistic feedback.
His anger should probably be focused at the showrunner / studio, but I’m guessing he’s not risking burning those bridges so is instead blaming the only other party in the decision making process, the test audiences.
Judging by your other claim in this thread that Americans have a 20% illiteracy rate, as an American here’s a 20% effort response:
Hurpdurp what’s i am legend gotta do with witchermans durrr
You do have a 20% illiteracy rate, and the response is that American test audiences have ruined very obviously good plots with their stupidity many times before.
Help, my literacy rate goes down every time I read your comments. Now, I can only communicate this way:
❔️🤔📖
The games and books seemed to do just fine in America lol
The Witcher 3 is one of the best selling games ever, and is considered by critics and fans alike to be one of the best games of its genre ever. This guy is a fucking clown.
Yep lol it’s laughable. Love your user icon, I use the N7 icon for a lot of different services.
Thanks! Mass Effect is in my top three game franchises (the other two being Witcher and Elder Scrolls).
Yes, came here to say this. Thank you for your services. American executive never own any failures. Claw back their bonuses, fucking brain piece of shits can’t even do their jobs anymore.
This is a Polish executive. You’re just parroting other’s opinions.
Well good to know that not only Americans suck this bad… kinda refreshing actually. Either why is u hurt tho?
Yea but that’s only because the game has lots of pretty, moving pictures. And the books have pretty covers.
I’m American, so I can’t even read. I noticed some symbols in the show that could be conceived as trying to impart words or ideas, and it just turned me right off.
You might be asking yourself: “If I can’t read, then how did I understand and respond to this topic?”, and I would then respond: “SHUT UP VOICES IN MY HEAD!”
This reads like a Dave Attell stand-up act lol
Great comment, but could have used a more realistic scenario of using a screen reader/dictation software to comment. It’s okay though, I get that you needed to simplify it for the American audiences.
“we want to make more money so we dumbed down the plot to idiot level and blame it on americans being dumb. Also we changed everything to be more emotional because that’s what tiktoks kids want, more emotion and less plot or something”
Guy sounds like a twat.
He’s a guy that is hitting excel spreadsheet metrics from past shows, wondering why his metrics aren’t appealing to people.
We made it this way because you’re stupid. Also, if you don’t like it, you’re stupid.
No wonder it turned out to be a pile of dogshit.
Yeah, blame your customers.
Simplifying is really different from what they did which is completely alter characters, unnecessarily kill off characters, introduce new plots that didn’t exist, etc. The Lord of the Rings movies, and the recent Dune movie both did a lot of that but are considered fantastic adaptations. Even Game of Thrones was an excellent adaptation for the first ~5 seasons and had huge mass market appeal while still being complex.
This is just shitty writers making excuses.
man the dune movie was so interesting sounding and watching it was such a … idk… it was an experience. There was so much stuff that seemed so loosely strung together to the point of feeling almost baffling. I wouldn’t think LoTR or early GoT are comparable?
You might need to go back and watch it again. I had a completely different experience, and I found the plot rather cohesive. It’s one of the best movies I’ve ever seen in my opinion.
I felt like Dune needed some prior knowledge of the books to really follow the plot. Not because the plot wasn’t cohesive, but because so much plot was condensed into a movie that was already 2 and half hours long. It’s not the fault of the movie, the book is just dense. But it does end up disorienting for the average viewer who can’t instantly adjust their understanding of the universe to fully follow the plot.
That’s fair. I never read the books or even watched the original movie, but I do have fans in my circle that have given me a bit of an indirect knowledge of the Duniverse. Even still, the acting, the cinematography, the music, everything in this movie is just amazing to me.
:shrug: I liked it.
This is just shitty defensiveness.
It’s entirely reasonable to think that someone in the writer’s room also wasn’t happy with the show direction. How about you listen to them when they explain why the shitty decisions were made instead of just assuming every writer sucked perfectly equally.
When it flops they’ll blame Americans too. Narcissists are incapable of assuming responsibility for their own failures.
This is the kinda guy that would yell at parking sign for smashing into his car.
It’s worse, he’s smashing his face with it and yet refuses to acknowledge the parking sign while complaining about some other imaginary obstacle instead.
If it were true that Americans & social media wanted such simplified plot, it would have been more successful than it was.
I know everyone thinks I’m a brittle American, but I’m kind of sick of everyone blaming Americans for choices that are made by people who think poorly of Americans.
As a general rule, the people making decisions to simplify things because they think Americans can’t handle a complex source ARE Americans.
@Windex007 Yeah, but they see themselves as smarter than the rest of the Americans when they are in fact, the bottom percentile.
I understand that.
My point is your original comment said you were sick of people blaming Americans for something that is literally being done by Americans.
The bland media algorithm designed to maximize profits, the “MCU formula”, comes straight from the top. People who see media simply in terms of investment vehicles for thier quarterly shareholders reports are the ones who lay down this law, and those “people” are overwhelmingly American business interests.
I know what you meant. There is such a thing as self-hatred, or thinking you’re the only exceptional member of a group. And there’s also such a thing as don’t trash the majority with the actions of a small minority, particularly a small minority that thinks they are better than the majority.
My point is that the reason this was dumbed down is that movie execs THINK Americans need that, not that Americans need that. Movie execs just think the average American is dumber than a movie exec.
I’m pretty sick of Americans feeling picked on.
You have an illiteracy rate of like 20%. Make a real public school system and then we’ll talk.
@masterspace All right, so I was interested in the statistic so I looked it up and 20% of Americans are at Level 1 literacy or below according to Wikipedia… which means that actually a lower number than that is functionally illiterate. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literacy_in_the_United_States
And out of curiosity I looked up Canada. https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/literacy 22% Level 1 or below.
Allowing for margin of error, your public school system sucks just as much as ours. So go milk a moose in French.
Being creepy by stalking my past conversations instead of arguing the point at hand, and ironically furthering my point by mistakenly using a study on Canada from 1989.
Our current (2013) sub-level 1 literacy rate is around 4%: https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/89-555-x/2013001/t/tbl1.1-eng.htm
No, our public education systems are not equivalent even if that makes you feel bad.
Stalking your past convos? No. I saw you were from lemmy.ca and therefore Canadian. Then I did a search for the 20 percent statistic and of course Wikipedia came up.
I don’t feel bad. I know our school system sucks because of a lot of systemic problems. I do think your education is not as great as you think it is if you simplify the 20% statistic to full illiteracy and if you think a random person on kbin needs to set up a new public school system before she can have an opinion.
That’s before we unpack the idea that literacy=intelligence, which is not always the case.
I do feel a bit bad about the stalking accusation. I didn’t realize the ability to see your server in the automatic kbin reply setup combined with the esoteric knowledge of how to use Duck Duck Go would frighten you, Mr Better Educated Than Me. We can stop if this is too much for your heart. This weather can be tough on the body and I know you guys aren’t well-versed in heat safety.
if you think a random person on kbin needs to set up a new public school system before she can have an opinion.
You’re allowed to have an opinion, if your opinion is that you feel like America is picked on for being too dumb in this context then I would suggest that you need some strong evidence to persuade people that literacy is not a proxy for education, or more specifically, the ability to hold more complicated medieval fantasy plots together.
And I am well aware of our flaws, our literacy rate is 1.25x the OECD average which is shameful. I’m just not false equivalencing that with America’s 6.33x. In fact if you remove America as the outlier dragging the OECD stats down we look even worse.
@masterspace So we’re helping you. I bet you feel bad about making fun of us now.
Punching down never feels good
@masterspace Oh go milk a moose.
You know that meme where the guy riding the bike sticks a crowbar in the tire? Yeah…
https://imgflip.com/i/7ujdz3
There you godeleted by creator
Acknowledged
Heyyy. I’d really appreciate that as an image of a notice. If you’re able to go ahead and get that on my desk soon, that would be greaaat
A hearty chuckle was given.
Sounds like sour grapes and rationalization. The producer states that his complicated projects failed. If all of your complicated projects failed, then it may be that you struggle with making complicated projects, not that Americans don’t like complicated projects.
Plus, it sounds like he disproves his own point without realizing it. He simplified the Witcher and it still isn’t doing well. Isn’t that an indicator that maybe plot complexity isn’t as strong of a predictor of audience engagement as he thinks?
And yet Game of Thrones and House of the Dragon are both in the same fantasy genre with complex storylines and they did great in the US.
He’s really blaming the execs and showrunner between the lines I think. Saying she had to “make tough decisions” means “she fucked up”. It’s Netflix and the showrunner who think they need to go to the lowest common denominator with scripts to appeal to Americans, especially hard fantasy/sci-fi. So he’s kinda pissed at both groups really not just audiences.
It’s a shame because other works like GOT 1-5 show the opposite. Go for complex, go for the source material, and audiences will be patient for it.
Then blame execs and showrunners, not the audience. American audiences are savvier than he thinks, just because he had one pitch that didn’t fare well with American audiences doesn’t mean that they won’t embrace more complicated elements of The Witcher.
Plus it just sounds sad; blame audiences for something you, as a producer, can’t effectively produce.
He wasn’t showrunner, just EP on 16 episodes, and he can’t burn the showrunner or Netflix if he wants more work in the industry.
I didn’t say he was a showrunner.
Fair, but:
Plus it just sounds sad; blame audiences for something you, as a producer, can’t effectively produce.
the storylines that he’s complaining about weren’t his to produce, they were the showrunner’s
This is coming from someone who never even read the books and got in fights with HC because of deviating from the world of the books/games?
Yup cause Amaricans wrote the script and decided against the millions of of fans (including the lead actor) who specifically said the new direction sucked directly to the entire production team… yup amaricans.
Series Produced by
Jason F. Brown … executive producer (24 episodes, 2019-2023)
Steve Gaub … executive producer / co-producer (24 episodes, 2019-2023)
Tomasz Baginski … executive producer (16 episodes, 2019-2023)
Sean Daniel … executive producer (16 episodes, 2019-2023)
Lauren Schmidt Hissrich … executive producer (16 episodes, 2019-2023)
Mike Ostrowski … executive producer / producer / co-executive producer (16 episodes, 2019-2023)
Jaroslaw Sawko … executive producer (16 episodes, 2019-2023)
Piotr Sikora … executive producer (16 episodes, 2019-2023)
Simon Emanuel … consulting producer / executive producer (16 episodes, 2019-2021)
Matthew O’Toole … executive producer (16 episodes, 2021-2023)
Matthew Bouch … consulting producer (12 episodes, 2021-2023)
Katie Bullock-Webster … post producer (8 episodes, 2019)
Declan De Barra … supervising producer (8 episodes, 2019)
Ildiko Kemeny … co-producer (8 episodes, 2019)
Jenny Klein … co-executive producer (8 episodes, 2019)
Sneha Koorse … supervising producer (8 episodes, 2019)
David Minkowski … co-producer (8 episodes, 2019)
Suzie Shearer … line producer (8 episodes, 2019)
Mark Birmingham … co-producer (8 episodes, 2021)
Sean Guest … associate producer (8 episodes, 2021)
Sam J. Brown … associate producer (8 episodes, 2023)
Ben Burt … associate producer (8 episodes, 2023)
Javier Grillo-Marxuach … executive producer (8 episodes, 2023)
Haily Hall … co-producer (8 episodes, 2023)
Sasha Harris … producer (8 episodes, 2023)
Veselin Karadjov … line producer (8 episodes, 2023)
Tania Lotia … supervising producer (8 episodes, 2023)
Tera Ragan … co-producer (8 episodes, 2023)
Alik Sakharov … executive producer (7 episodes, 2019)
Kathy Lingg … executive producer (6 episodes, 2019)
Juan Cano Nono … Líne Producer Canary Islands (4 episodes, 2019)
Beau DeMayo … co-producer (2 episodes, 2019)
Stephen Surjik … executive producer (2 episodes, 2023)
Marc Jobst … consulting producer (1 episode, 2019)God… it’s like having having an entire 8-level deep organizational structure for a team of 10 people. No wonder it’s mismanaged to shit.
Yeah, it looks pretty bad from that list. It may not be quite as bad in practice - some of them may have their name attached because, for instance, they co-own a production company where only person is involved but all three co-owners get their names on the credits. And some of them may be involved on the technical side, some for the story side, some just for financing, etc.
But even so, that looks like far too many names to have any kind of coherent vision.
