"...to improve the marketability."

Apparently the attempt to improve the marketability was not that effective because all those movies (21, Extraordinary Measures, Ghost in the Shell, The Last Airbender, etc..,) every single one of them, UNDER-PERFORMED or FLOPPED. Asians called for boycotts for every one of those movies. Personally, I think boycott is mostly useless and was not the reason those movies failed, (even though I refused to see those movies as a personal decision.) IMO, it was the controversies and negative publicity (which was different/separate from the boycott) that hurt and sank those movies.

Look, if you (i.e., white people) not not like Ciri being changed from white to non-white in the Netflix series, just do not see it. Boycott it, whatever, I don't care. Vote with your wallet. I refuse to see 21, Extraordinary Measures, Ghost in the Shell, The Last Airbender, or any of the movies that changed an Asian character to white. You guys are welcome to do the same. Netflix makes garbage. Netflix shows almost always suck anyway, so you guys should not hold too much high hope for the show, with or without a white Ciri.

That's got nothing to do with it. None of those were particularly hyped outside of a relatively small audience. Asians in America do not have that much buying power. It's likely that those would have met a similar fate even without the change in casting. And I suspect that in this case the change won't do much to the ratings. But, we'll never really know as Netflix isn't obligated to provide viewership information about specific programming.

As far as this series goes, I can't say that this is likely to have an effect on me one way or another. I likely will avoid watching it if the trailer looks like it sucks, but who knows, it depends a great deal on how they handle it.

Also, what you seem to be missing is that not everybody is that petty. Some people will probably boycott and maybe a few will watch because of the change, but the vast majority of the people are going to view this the same way that they view April O'Neil's color change as being a moderately interesting piece of trivia or completely ignored.

You probably don't know it but you've just made a great argument against identity politics.

I would love to live in a society where everyone identifies as human, and leave it at that, because I understand that identity politics only benefits the few at the expense of the many, who are left divided and at odds with those who should be allies.

And for the record, "whites" don't run Hollywood, so find someone else to blame.

This is good actually. If they have all their muhnorities in a TV show and shut up about the games, that'd be great. Also, props for asking for a kid to do a ''mature'' role; so edgy.

This is licensed by the author, CDPR has nothing to do with this TV series in any direct fashion.

Interesting.

Please do not generalize.

I was not exactly thrilled with Scarlett Johansson getting cast as main in Ghost in the Shell, either. At least Matt Damon in the Great Wall made some sense, story-wise... but the cast in, say, Gods of Egypt made me gag (moreso than its ham-fisted story itself did - hey, it was on the cable on a lazy evening...).

At least Hollywood did not get their hands on Romance of the Three Kingdoms yet (as far as I'm aware, anyway).

You're not the only one getting annoyed by arbitrary changes to established characters. Though it seems recently it's a bloody fad. Don't get me started on what they did to Gaiman's fantastic American Gods when they made it into a series...

I think the casting call is outright racist in its exclusion of white candidates. Doubly so given that Ciri is an extremely detailed character already.

But, sure. Take something very popular and start messing around with core elements of its story for no immediately apparent reason than some ridiculous notions of "affirmative actions." I'm sure it'll turn out in the end as well as the new Ghost Busters release did.

You do know that last week the top three movies at the box office in America were either Asian American or Asian-led movies, right? Crazy Rich Asians, Searching, and The Meg. Only the Meg was about 50% Asians; the other two were almost entirely Asian cast. (No thanks to Hollywood, since all three movies were all financed and produced by Asians ourselves; ultimately, don't rely on white people; if we want something done right, then gotta get it done on our own.) And Crazy Rich Asians has been number-one at the box office for about three weeks now.

Also, the buying power of Asians is not just in America. Our buying power extends to outside America: Crazy Rich Asians have been the top at the box office in Singapore, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Australia. The movie has not even opened in China, UK or most of Europe yet.

So who run Hollywood? Jews? Jews are still white to us Asians.

+1

(Edit: But you got a -1 for that comment about jews. not cool.)

The world is spinning backwards at progressively faster speed.
Why there has always to be an "us" and "them"?
Why must some group must always be shamed? I see an absurd increment in global racism, and ALL are victims, even "whites". Reading some of the comments here is appalling.

Not to intrude, but you do realize being Jewish or not is a matter of religion, not race?

+1. Couldn't agree more. If it were up to me I'd not reboot anything, but just do a spin-off, continue the story as it was left in the games or do a prequel. But that's not how Hollywood works. They're not necessarily good writers/directors aiming for their magnum opus - they're in the business of making money.

As for the death of the franchise, I don't think that will ever be the case for The Witcher, at least not for a while now. The games have done an amazing job of bringing light on the original books at least. Who cares about a potentially flopped Netflix series? I did not stop liking the amazing Avatar animated series after that horrendous live-action movie came out.

I guess it could be targeted at people that have heard about The Witcher only in passing rather than die-hard fans, but is that a reason to take more artistic liberties than usual? I certainly don't think so.

But there are visible mechanisms and invisible ones, conscious and unconscious ones, deliberate and accidental ones. We live less than ever in a simple world of "these over here, those over there". De-racializing our diverse environment means showing and treating racist elements that were hidden in common sense logic. For instance, the sense of normality and otherness. And those who don't realise these issues (don't realise, for instance, that we here have been living in a cultural environment where all representations of humans in media and fictions were based on some everybody-is-white normality with the rare other types standing out, and don't realise how it affects the image that society has of itself) are shocked by implicit factors being made explicit. Those who don't realise that our past and present folklore play an artificial, non-neutral, role in the inertia of our society's views are shoked that folklore is being consciously updated. For everyone, racial representations now exist, are being discussed and dealt with. It's analogous to the fact that we all have kidneys, but aren't conscious of them until they require our attention. And suddenly we live in very kidney times. In this case, it's the realisation that our societies are more diverse than what our traditional medias mirror, and that this has an effect on our senses of normality and identifications. It's a moral issue, it's a pragmatic social issue, it's a scientifc issue, and it's a commercial, marketing issue. And it's exactly as annoying as correcting invisible bad habits, suddenly having to pay attention to things that you used to do naturally without thinking about it.

I'm not sure about the increment in global racism (because DAMN, the 60s were something else, and I don't even mention the 30s). But there's an increment in its visibility, and in the visibility of the "racial" factor (where it used to play an invisible role). And as antiracism is, basically, the deconstruction and irrelevance of that factor, there is a paradox in antiracism forcing us to pay attention to it in order to neutralise its "subterranean" mechanisms. This leads to denials being called out, to cross-accusations ("no YOU are the racist"), and also to genuine racism being expressed in defensive terms ("oh no, our majority is being oppressed"), and to dangerous reactionary reflexes ("vote for simpler times were we're all amongst ourselves, and by ourselves you know what I mean").

But if you look at the arguments, almost all of them (naive or thoughtful, simple or complex, honest or manipulative) are based on the "racism is bad" premise (with even blatant racists usually denying that they are, or truly wanting not to be the racist ones). The fact that the antagonisms usually play out at another level ("what is antiracism", "does this practice reinforce or undermines racism", etc) makes me hopeful. In that I see a global decrease of racism. Or else, self-identifying in racism would be deemed more "respectable", and the nature of the arguments would be very different.

Also :

I pretty much disagree with that. I think that most succesfull tv series have a public distinct, broader, wider than their original sources'. The fans of "Game of Thrones" have, in their majority, not read the book, or read it because of the series. Same for "The Expanse", for "The handsmaid's tale", etc. The fans of the novels are a tiny subcategory of the tv series' public. And the series' success is independant from them. That's why the series operate on a different logic, and feels free to re-create its source's world. To adapt it for tv viewers.

Same as in cinema. Faithfulness to a book never played any role on the success of a classic movie. Many blockbusters are very very hollywood-ized novels (even when the book iself is a classic).

Dude, ktchong was commenting on richlind33's (((suggestion))). -1 for your lack of reading comprehension.

It's both an ethnicity ("race") and a religion. There are Judaist believers of other ethnicities (converts or raised in the faith from birth) and ethnic Jews who belong to other religions or none at all (the latter group includes most prominent Jewish scientists). There would be no Holocaust if people could just opt out of being gassed.

Sad thread is sad.