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An intriguing question is what effect on the hobby might there be if there was a highly successful 40K/30K movie? Would your FLGS be flooded with 40K "Trekies?" Would GW begin to pander to them? Would 40K become a Lord of the Rings clone? Would our beloved miniatures become prepainted and push fit? Could 40K become a cooperative boardgame? Would females (*shudder*) darken the doors of the local gaming store!?

My Southern Mother always said, "Be careful what you wish for."

I feel like Gaunt's Ghosts could make for a good Band of Brothers type series.

 Psienesis wrote:
GW's annual income is lower than the price tag of one Hollywood A-list actor.

That is why you get a producer....

All of this is wrong. It's pure business. GW is a toy company (technically they make models but it is a toy company since board games). Most money from movies is made on merchandise ie toys and other goods. When you sign a deal to make a movie they also want the rights to the toys and merchandise (a fairly typical scenario) so that means GW would be gutted by making a movie since they would need to give up their toy rights.

This was discussed one of the yearly summaries how they keep trying to find the right company/director combo but its hard for above reasons since 99.99% of movie studios want the merchandise rights (which includes toys). The report goes on to say that is is unlikely that there will ever be a big budget movie using any of their licenses.

 Gamgee wrote:
All of this is wrong. It's pure business. GW is a toy company (technically they make models but it is a toy company since board games). Most money from movies is made on merchandise ie toys and other goods. When you sign a deal to make a movie they also want the rights to the toys and merchandise (a fairly typical scenario) so that means GW would be gutted by making a movie since they would need to give up their toy rights.

This was discussed one of the yearly summaries how they keep trying to find the right company/director combo but its hard for above reasons since 99.99% of movie studios want the merchandise rights (which includes toys). The report goes on to say that is is unlikely that there will ever be a big budget movie using any of their licenses.

So you are saying blame George Lucas?

Nah this is common practice even before then. He lucked out getting the toy rights for Star Wars since they thought it would flop and he was good at persuading them ect. He is probably one of the only examples ever to do that as well which makes him nearly unique. I doubt GW will luck out in such a similar situation unless they become their own movie studio.

A Horus Heresy movie (or movies) would be a disaster.

First off, it's target audience is who? Not kids, which are the main sci-fi market when it comes to armies of Buzz Lightyears killing one another.

Secondly, it'd have to be rated NC-17 to do the setting any justice.

Third, it would be awful. Like Master of Disguise awful.

Lastly, it would be so terrible that all current enthusiasts would be so upset and shamed that to mention the movie would bring nothing but ridicule. Thus, everyone would back out of the hobby for fear of being sidelined with all the Hobbit/Hogwarts/Twighlight losers.

Great replies, everyone. Yeah, I'm a working screenwriter and I'd say the No. 1 problem is that Hollywood is based on morality, and 40K and 30K kind of reject morality - either originally as satire like in Starship Troopers, or now more seriously. Critics are only now starting to get Starship Troopers almost 20 years later...

So, without going the satire route, the only way it would sell would be as an amoral TV series - like Game of Thrones, as someone else said. As recent TV is based on moral ambiguity and mainstream Hollywood film has been traditionally based on moral clarity.

Well, i've seen a movie recently called "28 Panfilovci" - it's a russian movie about defence of Moscow (that's why Reich didn't make it to Moscow irl) during ww2. >50% funds were raised from donation money from the net. Something like a kickstarter. They got around 2.5-3 mln $ (hard to say cause the course has been changing significantly during this time) + added some of their own money and investor money and in the end made a movie for 4mln $ that happened to be quite good - critics hated it though. Yep, it's based on propaganda - even though the propaganda has been based on real events, kinda like 300 spartans, but in the end it looked realistic-ish and was recieved very good. Oh, it also involved tank models!

I see no reason of 30k not doing something like this. Just not go too heavy on epicness as it'd require a ton of money. Maybe something like a story from the eyes of a regular marine. He'd see a primarch or two from afar, taking over the galaxy killing a bunch of regular people, some tank explosions, than some traitors, chaos, primarch duel from afar. People would allready be happy enough to invest in the next part.

Bonestomper wrote:
Great replies, everyone. Yeah, I'm a working screenwriter and I'd say the No. 1 problem is that Hollywood is based on morality, and 40K and 30K kind of reject morality - either originally as satire like in Starship Troopers, or now more seriously. Critics are only now starting to get Starship Troopers almost 20 years later...

So, without going the satire route, the only way it would sell would be as an amoral TV series - like Game of Thrones, as someone else said. As recent TV is based on moral ambiguity and mainstream Hollywood film has been traditionally based on moral clarity.

I remember Starship Troopers came out and it got slated by the critics for being dumb. Perhaps they liked the book and were unable to view the film on it's own merits?

I finally got round to watching it a couple of years ago and I found it a great critique on war, the media, culture. If I didn't know better I would have thought it was a send up of the Iraq war!

The reason there will not be a Heresy movie is that the story of 30k/40k is utter garbage. The characters are one-dimensional at best, and 30k has turned into a bloated mess of book after book after book after book to milk the cash cow. In the tabletop game this is fine because you're there to make your own stories and characters, not because you care how SPACE™ MARINE™ SERGEANT™ AWESOMEONIUS™ is the BESTEST™ SPACE™ MARINE™ EVAR™. The fluff is there to be background material, a blank slate for you to write your own version of 40k on. And it does a very good job of that. But to make it into a movie you have one of two options:

1) Make the movie that GW fanboys/fangirls demand, a trilogy of 9 hour movies with every detail perfectly accurate to the fluff, every important character and faction represented, and a $999 trillion special effects budget to make sure it all perfectly copies the tabletop art. Unfortunately, because GW is a niche-market company, all 10 fanboys will watch the movies endlessly while everyone else is bored to sleep within 15 minutes. The 99.99999% of the movie-buying population that have never heard of 40k will have no idea what is going on or why they should care about anything, and that's if they stubbornly ignore all of the zero-star reviews and try to watch it at all. IOW, it's the kind of movie that ends the career of everyone involved with it.

2) Make a movie that will sell. Strip out 99% of the setting, change the fluff where necessary to make everything understandable for a newbie audience, etc. This can certainly work, as the endless parade of zero-substance special effects demo reels with hundreds of millions of dollars in ticket sales demonstrates, but why would any sane movie company do this? Nothing GW has done is unique, so why sacrifice a cut of the profits to license GW's IP when you can rip off the same stuff GW ripped off? Why buy the rights to the Ultramarines™ when you can make your own style of Heinlein-inspired power armor and have your space marines fight "bugs" that rip off all the same things GW stole the Tyranids from? Now you have all of the good parts of a 40k movie, except you don't have to deal with GW.

The simple fact is that licensed movies exist either because the IP is something valuable and unique that you can't get without a license, or has sufficient name recognition that a license means guaranteed ticket sales and a guaranteed profit. 40k has neither of these.

Also we live in a post Deadpool world now folks that movie was R rated and made tons of cash. So an a hard R is not what it used to be as long as good movies keep getting made. I hope it wasn't the exception.

There are a lot of problems getting in the way of there being a Horus Heresy movie franchise.

1: The Primarchs aren't really characters - they're more like archetypes. They're sort of meant to be embodiments of their chapters.

2: All the Primarchs are Mary Sues.

3: The chapters are all pretty contrived and mono-dimensional when you get down to it.

4: There's no room for romantic subplots.

5: For that matter, there's little room for female characters.

6: There isn't even much room for characters who are non-white - at least without upsetting fanboyz.

7: The source materiel was originally intended to be tongue-in-cheek, then got grimdarkified. Doesn't make for the best foundation for an actual narrative.

8: Some of the naming conventions are ridiculous.

9: What looks good on the tabletop doesn't necessarily look good on the movie screen (looking at YOU, great big shoulderpads).

10: It would require scads of CGI.

On the point about the Warcraft movie - it actually flopped in the United States, and that's with a giant pre-existing audience one would think would be pre-disposed to like it. 40K has a much smaller fanbase than WoW.

There will be another Warcraft since its over seas take was gigantic.

 Gamgee wrote:
There will be another Warcraft since its over seas take was gigantic.

Yeah, I read it did well enough in China to turn it around. What are the chances 40K would have a similar result though? It'd pretty much have to turn a profit in the States, and it's built-in fanboy audience is much smaller than Warcraft's was.

Movies cost a buttload of money to make, Warhammer's a setting that would require something truly enormous - like Star Wars levels of money - to properly show off the setting, and it'd be a hard sell to some people. Movies based on games (both tabletop and video) also tend to do really, really poorly both critically and at the box office. It's a huge gamble that probably wouldn't pay off.

 Grand.Master.Raziel wrote:

10: It would require scads of CGI.

Or just regular old animation. Any particular design choice can also be changed. If power armour doesn't look great on television or the big screen, tweak it until it does. If there are too many primarchs and legions, combine them until they're manageable. Iron Warriors and Death Guard are close enough that they can be combined without too much trouble. Tough-as-nails city fighters who are ruthless and get sent to do all the gruelling, thankless things. Enough of the others can be merged in sensible ways.


That's assuming you don't just do the smart thing and make a war comedy, a cosmic tragedy or something else new.

I'm going with it's not a very compelling story.

 Gamgee wrote:
Nah this is common practice even before then. He lucked out getting the toy rights for Star Wars since they thought it would flop and he was good at persuading them ect.

20th Century Fox was deeply invested in producing the blockbuster sci-fi hit of 1977... Damnation Alley. The studio seemed to have very little faith that anything would come of Lucas' project.

 Gamgee wrote:
There will be another Warcraft since its over seas take was gigantic.

It was fortunately much more popular oversears than it was in the U.S, so it wasn't a murderous loss. The overseas take _should_ have made it a smashing success, but in today's atmosphere of 'if it's not a blockbuster then it's a bust,' leaves it in difficult position for follow-up.

As previous posters have mentioned, Warhammer 40K isn't that popular. I'll leave that where it is. However, what I fail to understand is the insistence of 40K posters whenever this concept comes up is the basic premise of picking the Horus Heresy out of all the vast fluff to be the FIRST theatrically released movie in that setting.
30K is the backstory, one that up until recently was only a couple books and shadowy myths. 30K has never been the core of the game, the grim darkness of 40K has. While the Heresy sets the stage for what happens, making a movie of it is like starting the Lord of the Rings movie franchise off with a Silmarillion trilogy...it's important to the existing fans but it's not the core story of the setting. The majestic age of the Crusade and treachery of the Heresy merely serve to enhance the grimdark of the 41st millennium where there is now only bitter, stagnant, and horrifying war. For most fans of the franchise it is sufficient to know the basics, just like knowing that the fall of Númenor happened is enough for most Lord of the Rings fans with only a few going deeper. The Emperor's legions didn't get anyone into 40K; their successors and the twisted remnants of the traitors did; as did the Eldar, the Orks, the Tau and the Tyranids. Warhammer 40K is what it is because for the last 10,000 years the Emperor has sat silent on the golden throne, not because he leads his legions in a crusade of enlightenment and conquest.

If you want to make a movie about the setting, pick the Eisenhorn or Gaunt's Ghosts series, or one of those trilogies about a space marine chapter. But don't start with The Heresy.

Any time you think a movie concept would never possibly be made, go watch samurai cop and realize anything is possible.

The problem with a 40k film is that what story do you tell? There's isn't a singular main story line in the 41st millennium that could be told. You could do the third war for armeggedon maybe?
The Horus Heresy would be better but would have to be set up as the warhammer cinematic universe. Big with high expectations and a high cost but would be brilliant. There are parts of the story I would love to see in the screen and wouldn't have a problem with them trimming out the rubbish to streamline into movies. Like what they did to lord of the rings. I could see the first 3 books condensed into 2 films. Then smaller side films like the flight of the Einstein.

I can only see this as a series on Netflix or the cable channels (HBO, Showtime, etc...)

With the success of Game of Thrones, Vikings, Marvel series... it's not a far cry that a 40k themed series couldn't succeed.

However, the series lineup may have to be something like how the Netflix Marvel series are tied together, or maybe even how each season of American Horror Stories are different.

 Backspacehacker wrote:
Because there is so much that happened, you would not be able to fit it into a 3 movie trilogy without glossing over a bunch of stuff.

Totally disagree. The Horus Heresy was like a 6 page story originally. It has only a handful of key points.

The Emperor creates the Legions and conquers the galaxy, retires back to Terra.
Horus becomes Warmaster, but is corrupted by evil demons.
He traps and destroys the three Legions at Istvaan.
Horus assaults Terra while he has the advantage.


That's it. Everything else is padding. Calth, Prospero, and the fate of the Dark Angels don't have to be shown in their entirety. These weren't even part of the earliest versions of the Heresy story, so they aren't core components.

First movie: Great Crusade, fall of Lorgar, Emperor retires to Earf. Establish the principle characters who will be vital to how the story plays out (Horus, Lorgar, Magnus, Ferrus, Sanguinius, Dorn, Guilliman). Everyone else can be mentioned, possibly even shown, but ultimately aren't vital to the Heresy story so won't need a ton of exposition.
Second movie: Fall of Horus, Istvaan.
Third movie: Horus's strategic maneuvering (Calth, Prospero), Battle of Terra.

It's actually a perfect story arc. It has exposition, rising action, a climax, falling action, and a denouement. In fact, it parallels the Lord of the Rings fairly well, in terms of trilogy structure. There's a clear antagonist (Sauron/Chaos), the stakes raise, the enemy grows stronger, the protagonists reach a darkest hour, then the antagonist is defeated.

The last thing a Horus Heresy retelling needs is the filler like Deliverance Lost, Vulkan Lives, or Legion. In fact, mainstream audiences will think the "themed" Space Marines are fairly silly (because they are). I mean, people wonder why Ultramarines are the "mascot" Marines. It's because they are easily understood. Big guys, with big armor and big guns. You know what a Marine is in real life, so you can imagine that's what they would be in the future. No need to explain fangs, hoodie bathrobes, or furries. A Horus Heresy movie trilogy doesn't need to explore the Marine Tropes. It doesn't need to explore the antagonisms between the Lion and Russ, etc. Sure, die hard fans might miss some of the omissions, but they aren't necessary to turn the Horus Heresy story into a movie.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Bookwrack wrote:

 Gamgee wrote:
There will be another Warcraft since its over seas take was gigantic.

It was fortunately much more popular oversears than it was in the U.S, so it wasn't a murderous loss. The overseas take _should_ have made it a smashing success, but in today's atmosphere of 'if it's not a blockbuster then it's a bust,' leaves it in difficult position for follow-up.

The only way a Warcraft sequel happens is if it happens for the Chinese audience (possibly a first of its kind for a franchise). It wasn't just "more popular" in China. It completely bombed in America. Opened at #2 and its only competition were sequels to The Conjuring and Now You See Me. It experienced a 66% drop in its second weekend, and was being beaten by X-Men Apocalypse (in it's 5th week) by week 3. Final US receipts probably only barely covered their worldwide marketing spend, let alone the production costs. The US market didn't care about Warcraft, and worse, the movie itself was terrible.

If they ever made this into a trilogy then there would be endless moans about how they left this out, and why didn't they focus more on this character. Now if someone took the base story called it something else and changed just enough to take the symbols out then people would love it. When you put the name on it people automatically have it in there heads what it should be and the movie can't live up to what's in everyone's heads.

Because it would be bad.

 Veteran Sergeant wrote:

The only way a Warcraft sequel happens is if it happens for the Chinese audience (possibly a first of its kind for a franchise). It wasn't just "more popular" in China. It completely bombed in America. Opened at #2 and its only competition were sequels to The Conjuring and Now You See Me. It experienced a 66% drop in its second weekend, and was being beaten by X-Men Apocalypse (in it's 5th week) by week 3. Final US receipts probably only barely covered their worldwide marketing spend, let alone the production costs. The US market didn't care about Warcraft, and worse, the movie itself was terrible.

As I recall, it made $50 million in the U.S. box office having cost $150 million to make. I'm curious what home release returns will be like, but the quality of the movie itself makes a good point about the difficulty in making a movie that not only appeals to people who know the franchise, but pulls in new audience as well.

Because a scene that makes someone who is already into 40K go, 'holy gak, that reveal of Horus! It's awesome, and that conversation with Sanguinius, man this is amazing!' needs to also appeal to the person there because they like sci-fi action but have none of the background and expectations. I think the warcraft movie shows just how hard it can be to generate that kind of cross audience appeal.

If there was to be a Warhammer 40k movie with a hint of succeeding it'd have to be something simple.

Space Hulk for example would make a perfect movie and there's little explanation on things needed for it to be succesful. 'Here are some badass dudes in huge bulky armor going on to a derelict space ship infested with aliens for some reason' Que intense buildup and action. It'd be a great no thrills action movie with some horror elements and dialogue could be kept to a minimum.

As another good movie they could make one based on a Deathwatch Kill Team being sent to X to do X. Again, no thrills action movie with no real explanation of source material needed.

I'll tell you guys this.

I was a Warcraft fan from 2007 to 2016.

I saw the Warcraft movie.

Believe me, you may not enjoy whatever makes it to the silver screen of any 40k story you enjoy.

That said, they could keep production costs down by making it a 2D animated movie instead of going for life-like CGI. And GW can't afford life-like CGI anyways.

I really liked the Warcraft movie though. I think it tried to explain way too much though and would have had more potential for a sequel if it kept things simple.

'Here are orcs, they are invading' Que epic battles.

Then the 2nd film could have focused on the Orcs and why they are doing what they do.