The Witcher 2 to film in the UK for Netflix

As the first series of The Witcher gears up to make its debut on Netflix, the second run is now in pre-production in the UK readying to shoot in early 2020.

Henry Cavill stars as the solitary monster-hunter Giralt of Rivia with Anya Chalotra and Freya Allan among the co-stars returning for the second season.

The first series filmed largely in Hungary with stints in the Canary Islands and Poland; it premieres on Netflix on 20 December.

Showrunner Lauren Schmidt Hissrich has adapted the original books by Andrzej Sapkowski, although the fantasy brand is also well-known as a video game.

The Witcher is the latest in a deluge of hefty inward investment projects to set up home in the UK.

Netflix, Disney and Marvel have been leading the charge of major US studios keen to utilise the UK’s generous tax incentive, easy-to-reach and varied locations and world-class studios and crew.

Recent BFI figures stated that total UK spend on high-end television programmes doubled from £755m to a record £1.55bn year-on-year for the first nine months of 2019. In the first nine months of this year, 101 high-end TV programmes started principal photography in the UK, of which 63 were inward investment and co-productions, generating a total UK spend of £1.22bn.

This article first appeared on our sister site, The Knowledge.