Trivia / The Hexer

• Ability over Appearance:
  • At the time of the movie's production, casting Zbigniew Zamachowski as Jaskier (Dandelion) has spurred some serious controversies, as he looked nothing like Dandelion from the books. After the movie's premiere even the staunches of critics had to admit that his performance was actually one of the movie's brightest spots. Zamachowski reprised his role for Alzur's Legacy, a Fan Film that was released in December 2019.
  • To a lesser extent, when the series was finally released, even most hardcore fans had to agree that Michał Żebrowski, despite being a far cry of what is known about Geralt's appearance, still delivered a good role. Numerous fans even consider it a definitive appearance of the White Wolf. Hell, even Polish voice of Geralt in video games was recorded by a very similar sounding Jacek Rozenek, when Żebrowski turned down the offer to reprise his role. Żebrowski ended up reprising the role in the 2019 Netflix series' Polish dub.
• All-Star Cast: It's easy to claim that everyone who was someone in the late 90s Polish movie industry played at least a bit part. Meanwhile, numerous extras were played by actors who soon became famous, providing a hefty dose of Retroactive Recognition.
• Box Office Bomb: While the film was never intended to recoup total production cost and was simply a side project to squeeze out more money from the existing series footage, it barely made one million złotych back against the total series production cost of 18.8 million.
• Breakaway Pop Hit: Nie pokonasz miłości ^{direct translation} "You can't win against love" by Robert Gawliński. The massive popularity of the song was one of the main reasons for Gawliiński to restart his defunct, early 90s rock band Wilki, leading to a Career Resurrection and surge of popularity in the 00s that managed to completely eclipse the original fame of both him and his band.
• Creator Backlash: Michał Szczerbic, the screenwriter, asked his name to be removed from the movie's opening credits, because he did not like the way the series has been chopped down to two hours; his name still remains in the TV version.
• Creator Killer: Marek Brodzki never again directed anything else than a handful of documentries. However, he has a vivid career as an assistant director.
• Descended Creator: Various extras and bit characters were played by the members of the filming crew, often as their only ever acting credit in a long career as a film technician. At least some of those were done purely for the fun of playing a colourful heavy for a specific plotline, while others did this for budgetary reasons or to simply get more people in the shot.
• Development Hell: This was one of the last "old school" productions in Polish cinematography, with most of execs still having all their experience from the commie era and treating the entire production as if it was still early 80s. Which of course meant a lot of careless decisions, extremely incompetent budget management (despite securing some serious funds for Polish standards) and general assumption that "things will work out on their own". They didn't.
  • Pre-production started in early 1996. Filming didn't being until mid-July 2000, over four years later, and already started with a one-month delay, forcing a hectic pace with all the outdoor scenes set during summer. And while there was a genuine requirement for long filming plan due to changing seasons and especially need for winter shots, it still dragged almost two months past the planned end, with filming wrapped up mid-March 2001, rather than final week of January same year.
  • Due to scheludes, when most of the cast was already assembled and more importantly the film stock was already bough, negotiations with Sapkowski about the adaptation itself weren't finished yet. And he suddenly walked away from them.
  • Winter shots proved to be extremely hard, as nobody take into account that in winter mountain roads might be inaccessable, either making it impossible for crew to get to the filming location or get out of it after filming ended. And heating is expensive and needless luxury, so actors were pretty much freezing most of the time.
    • In fact, due to poorly performed location hunt, certain sequences (coincidently most of them requiring snowy winter) were shot all over Poland, even if themselves they've created a seamless sequence. For example Geralt meeting the old wandering sage in the middle of nowhere required from the crew to relocate 300 km from the previous location, only to film a scene lasting for 40 seconds and nothing else in that place. It's absolutely generic landscape that could be found just about anywhere. Stunts like that were the main reason why budget was spent on almost absurd rate without providing any significant effects.
  • At certain point the production was delayed, because the company providing catering for crew and actors wasn't paid for almost a month.
  • TVP outright stated during editing phase that either a movie is made out of series stock, or they won't air the series. And then, when the movie bombed spectacularly, the series was canned for a year to let the situation normalise on its own.
  • Due to a lot of copyright issues, virtual dissolution of Heritage Films by mid 00s and general attitude of Old Shame among execs, the plans for DVD release of the series are permanently on hold, just like a HD re-release of the movie. Which is a shame, since due to poor quality of film stock the absolutely gorgeous shots of landscape can't shine in their full glory.
• Disowned Adaptation: Andrzej Sapkowski himself euphemistically expressed his negative opinion about the film: "I can answer only with a single word, an obscene, albeit a short one". He much preferred the later series that streamed on Netflix.
• Executive Meddling: Three distinctive stages of it, leading to a complete mess in the end
  • Andrzej Sapkowski withdrawed his support for adaptation and stopped negotiations in the middle of them, after already selling rights to the bulk of short stories. Maybe it was attempt to rise up the price further, maybe it was simple spite. Since Sapkowski is the copyright holder and there was already substantial money put on securing those rights, execs decided to go with it without securing full rights. Instead, Szczerbic was tasked to simply write script himself.
  • Szczerbic was a true prima donna on the set, having both the power of script writer and being production executive. He was rewritting the script so often it made it hard to shot it in sequence, only to then change the script again, dumping entire sequences and forcing the crew and actors to film new ones... while the tape and thus funds were running. The fact he treated director Marek Brodzki like dirt didn't help either. He also didn't exactly grasped the technical issues of making an action fantasy with a lot of combat in it, trying to save money on fighting sequences, stunts and make-up, with predictable results.^note In his defense, in the same time he was a big supporter of CGI rather than animatronics. And while the CGI didn't age well, the animatronics that still ended up in the series aged even worse.
  • When the editing started, TVP execs insisted on making a Compilation Movie due to both tradition and sensing easy money to be made. Everyone involved in the production, even Szczerbic, knew this was a horrible idea, but TVP threatened to withdraw their support, basically leaving the finished series without a TV station to air it and legal battle that could drag for years. Heritage Films also decided that it's an easy and fast way to make some money on the side, supporting the idea and offering to distribute the finished movie. In the end they've literally chopped a 120 nonsensical minutes out of existing footage. For comparison, the finished TV series consists of 13 episodes, 50-55 minutes each. To this day editors are taugh on Hexer example how to not edit movie material together.
• Flip-Flop of God: Andrzej Sapkowski started as one of the biggest supporter of the production. After a heated dispute about his absolutely unrealistic paycheck, followed by even bigger quarrel about selling rights only to hand-picked short stories (forcing Michał Szczerbic to basically write around copyrights), he stormed out of the production and started an extensive slander campaign, openly asking fandom to torch the series, despite it wasn't even made yet.
• Genre-Killer: The flop of the Hexer convinced everyone to not bother with fantasy in Polish cinema and TV. It is first and last professional, fully Polish fantasy production.
• Hey, It's That Place!: Castle of the Teutonic Order in Malbork, which appeared in many Polish movies.
• Insistent Terminology: "'Hexer'" was initially Sapkowski's preferred "international" translation of the Polish word "wiedźmin"; however, the movie is more commonly referred to as "The Witcher" by fans since the release of The Witcher computer game.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: For years, there was no official home media release or even access to the series. You either saw any of the re-runs, or someone's bootleg recording of those. It wasn't until mid-2010s when the series became accessible as video-on-demand from Polish public TV, TVP, but there is still no actual release of the series. This reached the point where a version on VCD was being sold by some offshore company in late 00s, but that still was an illegal copy made from a bootleg.
• Money, Dear Boy: A quite infamous case by Daniel Olbrychski. For no particular reason Michał Szczerbic wanted to hire him to play a very minor role. Olbrychski openly said he won't even bother unless he's offered a 250 thousand złotych for what was basically a bit part, probably trying to just get rid of Szczerbic and not wanting to play. He eventually accepted the role for more than 300 thousand złotych, openly saying he would have to be stupid to not take so much money for almost no work. He is on screen in three scenes. For comparison, Michał Żebrowski, who played Geralt, was supposedly paid 120 thousands złotych for 10-month long contract and it was itself considered a pretty good money for Polish standards.
• No Budget: Zig-Zagged. Despite book fandom claims, it is one of the most expensive productions in Poland to date and the most expensive Polish TV series^note Which was one of the main reasons why Polish National TV was tempted to make a Compilation Movie - they are banned by law to make commercial breaks during the running time of any production. Knowing the marketing potential of the show, they've instead decided to edit a film for cinemas and cash on the ticket sales. It backfired horribly. Said that, even the people involved into production agree that the budget could be better used. For example, over 100 thousand dollars^note Out of budget of roughtly 6 millions and being more than all the three leads combined got for 10 months of work were spent on hiring Daniel Olbrychski to play a literal One-Scene Wonder, but nobody hired a professional fencing instructor for a series about sword-wielding monster slayer. Instead, an aikido trainer, initially hired only for hand-to-hand fights, was doing overtime.
• No Export for You: Although the movie was released on DVD (including an international version with English subtitles), the series was never released on DVD and there are no known plans to release it. If you want to see it with English subtitles, you either have to look for a poor quality bootleg version released on the Internet… or pray for reruns on TVP Polonia ^note (An international channel of Polish Television targeted at Poles and people of Polish ancestry living abroad; it occasionally airs selected Polish shows with English subtitles.).
• Playing Against Type: Michał Milowicz plays Crach an Craite. While he does portray the character with his typical fare of big-mouthed dandy, it is still a role of a badass fantasy Viking, so he goes for an axe and prepares to slay the beast when the feast he was so far too busy with turns ugly. To make it weirder, he was cast before he received his "type" as effeminate dandy, but the film and especially the series were released by the time he was firmly in a very tight typecast and with even stronger role-association.
• Posthumous Credit: Grzegorz Ciechowski composed the score for the movie shortly before he suffered a fatal heart attack in December 2001.
• Production Posse: Michał Żebrowski (Geralt) and Zbigniew Zamachowski (Dandelion) played prior together in the film adaptation of With Fire And Sword. More, their roles were also those of the True Companions.
• Prop Recycling: Shows from time to time with various armour elements, costumes and accessories. Most notable is the golden chain, first worn by chancellor Gyllenstiern during the dragon hunt, is later seen on the neck of Chappelle, just pulled much higher.
• Serendipity Writes the Plot:
  • The slight changes in otherwise very faitful Episode 4 (based on The Bound of Reason) came from simple budgetary restrains and technical limitations. There was just no way to film Yennefer turning bunch of charging peasants into animals, and even less to make them yellow due to miscasted spell.
  • Every time a monster wasn't required to fight or move too much in the shot, a doll was used. Since the series was filmed between 2000 and 2001, CGI was very expensive and thus restricted only to creatures facing Geralt and impossible to do with animatronics. For very similar reasons, magic was done using practical effects.
• Star-Making Role: Żebrowski is a curious case. He was already famous for a rising young actor, but it was his role as Geralt that firmly made him into a household name.
• Star-Derailing Role: Agata Buzek's first big role was as Pavetta. She spent almost a decade on rebuilding the damage created by that role, eventually reaching Career Resurrection by the late 2000s.
• What Could Have Been: When pre-production for the series started, Sapkowski was offered to simply pen the script himself or at least work with Szczerbic (who was attached to the project from the start). He refused on a very simple grounds: when he was approached about it, he just finished writing Baptism of Fire and was on a tight schedule to finish rest of the saga, with remaining two books ahead of him. And before he even finished the saga (Lady of the Lake came out in 1999), his relationship with the production execs went completely sour. Should the pre-production simply started later (filming didn't begin until July 2000), there is a good chance Sapkowski would get directly involved into creating the series, at the very least removing all the issues created by Writing Around Trademarks.

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