Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

With all the material available and the rather complex and deep source material for the Horus Heresy, I've been thinking it could make an amazing show like game of thrones which if games workshop could ever find some producer to actually take their ip and make it good, unlike the recent games that have been produced, I think it could be amazing and bring Warhammer 40k into a more mainstream market.

I know I'm fan girling here a bit but game of thrones has 5 books, the Horus Heresy has 20+ so there isnt the problem of running out of material. A movie is a terrible idea but perhaps with new formats like hulu and Netflix something like this would be more viable.

Anybody have any thoughts on the matter?

I've had the exact same thoughts, the Horus Heresy would make an amazing GoT-esque tv series. The only problem is that it would be so expensive to do properly that it will (probably) never happen.

Just look at GoT, it's one of the highest budget tv shows around at the moment and it mostly consists of no-name actors LARPing in the woods. Just think of all the suits of power armour, ship interior sets and CGI they would need to do to make it work. Hell, filming Isstvan V would cost more than most movies.

Best we can hope for right now is a cartoony animated series akin to the Clone Wars that somehow manages to retain all the blood and gore of the source material.

Personally, I'm hoping we get a Telltale Games adaptation of the series. They certainly did the Walking Dead justice.

Rowan Atkinson would be best Horus Ever.

If it was done as an MTV animation, similar to Aeon Flux, sure. The costs would need to be kept down and it would not be considered appropriate for young audiences, if done correctly.

The problem is the IP. The people who license properties for production like that want full control. That is something GW would never give up.

Producing a movie / TV show / cartoon / etc is a whole other world from where GW is. Licensing, production, distribution and sales are all bound up within GW, whereas there are multiple parties coming together for each of those functions in the entertainment world. It would be very. very hard for GW to try and do all those things on their own and still produce a quality product.

Standard response to this subject: fans might like it, but the people with money are never going to be interested. There are two possible routes the creator could go with:

1) Make the movie/show that the hardcore fans want to see. Perfect accuracy to the fluff, a CGI budget larger than the GDP of entire countries, etc. The hardcore fans will love it, but everyone else will ignore it. The sprawling mess of 40k's fluff makes it difficult to get into as a newbie, and most of the stories are actually pretty terrible from a literary perspective. These flaws are tolerable when you're talking about fluff that is intended to be the background to a game, since newbies can learn as they play (if they care enough) and creating your own stories is much more interesting than the official ones anyway. But they're fatal flaws with a movie or TV show. Most of the potential viewers will take one look at it and move on to the next thing. And therefore there is very little hope of the project making a profit.

2) Make the movie/show that sells. Strip out most of the fluff, modify whatever is necessary to make it friendly to new fans, and scale down the effects to something resembling a reasonable budget. This might be a viable plan, but it raises the question of why you want to deal with GW at all. Most of 40k is just ripping off other scifi/fantasy works, so anyone who wants to make a 40k TV show can rip off the same stuff and get 95% of 40k with 0% of dealing with GW. No fighting GW's lawyers, no dealing with GW's control over the fluff, and no giving GW any of the profit.

The second option is the pretty clear winner if you're concerned with maximizing profit and not fangirling over how awesome your new show is. And this is why the Ultramarines movie was unwatchable garbage made on a $10 budget by a no-name studio, nobody had any interest in taking the IP.