Sebastian Kalemba, animation director of Cyberpunk 2077, has been named game director on CD Projekt's next Witcher film (opens in new tab), the company announced on Twitter.

"Career news: I will be directing on the new Witcher saga," Kalemba tweeted. "Since joining CDPROJEKTRED, I have believed that nothing is impossible and I am proud to be a part of CDPR and to work with such a talented and passionate team." Prior to [Cyberpunk 2077], he was a character animator on The Witcher 3 Wild Hunt, lead animator on the Hearts of Stone expansion, and animation director on Blood and Wine. Before joining CD Projekt, he worked on Risen 3 : Lead Animator for "Titan Lords" and was in charge of testing for "Grim Legends 2: Song of the Dark Swan". Most recently, according to his LinkedIn (opens in new tab) profile, Kalemba was creative director at CD Projekt.

CD Projekt has not officially announced Kalemba's position, but she has worked on Cyberpunk 2077 as Quest Director Pawel Sasko (open in new tab), Community Director Marcin Momot (open in new tab), PR Director Radek Grabowski (open in new tab), and Communications Manager Pawel Burza (open in new tab).

Kalemba is the first relative newcomer to take the reins of CD Projekt's Witcher series. The original Witcher did not have a director by name, but CD Projekt co-founder Michał Kiciński (open in new tab) has spoken about his "game vision," and the director of The Witcher 2: The King's Assassin is Adam Badowski ( Konrad Tomaszkiewicz (opens in new tab), director of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, started his career as a tester on the original Witcher Tomaszkiewicz left CD Projekt in early 2022 to co-found a new studio called Rebel Wolves (opens in new tab).

To be clear, I don't see that as a problem. The Witcher 3 is seven years old, and it will almost certainly be ten years (or more) by the time The Witcher 4 is released. As much as I love the series (and I love it very much), if CD Projekt is going to continue with it, and especially if they are going to move away from the continuation of Geralt's adventures, new blood and new vision will be essential for the success of this series.

At this point, we still know very little about "The Witcher 4" (open in new tab); CD Projekt announced in May that the game was in pre-production, but who will it follow, perhaps not Geralt, but Ciri, or someone entirely new (or a whole new faction (open in new tab)) to follow, and the official title remains undecided, and one can only assume that it will not be The Witcher 4. One interesting note is that the avatars on both Kalemba's Twitter and LinkedIn accounts have art taken from The Witcher: the game is set long before the time of Geralt, when multiple Witcher schools were in their heyday.

"Hints of future developments" Probably not, but at this point anything is possible.

Of course, no release date for the next Witcher game has even been hinted at: CD Projekt recently said it wants to release three new Witcher games in six years, which I don't think is necessarily a good idea.