The Witcher: Nightmare of the Wolf Trailer Shifts Focus to Geralt’s Mentor Vesemir

The Witcher: Nightmare of the Wolf has gotten its first trailer. On Wednesday, Netflix unveiled a teaser trailer for its English-language Witcher prequel spin-off anime movie, directed by Kwang Il Han, written by Beau DeMayo, and animated by South Korea's Studio MIR. The Witcher: Nightmare of the Wolf follows Geralt's (Henry Cavill) mentor Vesemir, voiced by Theo James (The Divergent Series) — an older version of Vesemir will be played by Kim Bodnia (The Bridge) in The Witcher season 2 — and his exploits as a young witcher, from being a bounty hunter to confronting his past.

If you want more than the one-minute The Witcher: Nightmare of the Wolf teaser trailer, Netflix has you covered with The Witcher showrunner Lauren Schmidt Hissrisch breaking down the trailer in a separate three-minute video. She reveals that the anime prequel movie will showcase Kaer Morhen — an old keep where witchers of the Wolf were trained — at its peak, while it appears as a “shell of its former self” in The Witcher season 2. Hissrich is also excited because The Witcher: Nightmare of the Wolf shows Vesemir having fun, while Geralt is all business in the live-action series.

The Witcher showrunner also gives fans a mystery to solve, noting that the leshen — the green-eyed demon ghoul that you briefly spot in The Witcher: Nightmare of the Wolf trailer — is quite different from the leshen that The Witcher season 2 will introduce. “Maybe that's a little mystery for fans of season 2,” Hissrich adds, “start to wonder why they are two different types of leshen monsters.”

Hissrisch is the producer on The Witcher: Nightmare of the Wolf. In addition to James as Vesemir, The Witcher anime movie stars the voices of Lara Pulver as Tetra, Graham McTavish as Deglan, and Mary McDonnell as Lady Zerbst.

Here's the official synopsis for The Witcher: Nightmare of the Wolf from Netflix:

The world of The Witcher expands in this anime origin story: Before Geralt, there was his mentor Vesemir — a swashbuckling young witcher who escaped a life of poverty to slay monsters for coin. But when a strange new monster begins terrorizing a politically-fraught kingdom, Vesemir finds himself on a frightening adventure that forces him to confront the demons of his past.

The Witcher: Nightmare of the Wolf will release August 23 on Netflix. The Witcher season 2 arrives December 17 on Netflix.