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For movie adaptations of space marines with live actors, wicked special effects are required. It would be very difficult to make a big budget WH40K movie, unless the budget was the LARGEST BUDGET IN CINEMA HISTORY; imagine trying to get armies of space marines realistically on the big screen? But technology has come a long way, an example being the Avengers Infinity War movie, which apparently is the most expensive movie to date. The Thanos character used a lot of good CGI, in my opinion. What do you think? Does he look about the same size as you would picture a Primarch to be? And Space Marines would be like bigger versions of the wrestler Dave Bautista's character Drax, as he's only 6'2", and yah gotta be at least 6'4" to be a marine, amirite?

This topic comes up every so often. The budget probably isn't as much as you would think, probably could be done cheaper than a CGI version. We have had the movie Ultramarines, as poor as it was, for example.

If Hollywood were to approach it "for real", it would probably be done on a budget and with effects akin to Mutant Chronicles ($25 million budget, in 2008). If the film survived and showed potential, it might work its way up to blockbuster level.

As for the Marines, I doubt they'd do much to give us their full impressive 8' height. At best, they might be able to get away with costumes that are akin to the cosplay costumes - a little bit of stiltwork maybe, but I doubt it. Maybe just choose some taller actors (all marines over 6' tall, all other actors 5' 10" or less).

And you know the main character would run around with his helmet off after the first few minutes of the movie.

Well, the size primarchs does seem to vary(Yeah ,I know, some books say that "technically" they have no physical form) with at least Alpharius being able to disquise himself as a marine.

Though I'd prefer an animation in Karl Kopinski's artstyle

It has a right amount of 'realistic' and 'stylistic' in it, and conveys this feeling that we're no longer in our world, and this ain't our humanity anymore. And you don't get that inevitable conflict between real and CGI

the size of Marines isn't an issue there are all sorts of tricks to make someone apper much larger then they are or much smaller, consider the Hobbits in LOTR.

That said I think a Horus Heresy movie would be a mistake. better off doing a stand alone film in 40k.

 DoMiNaNt_HuNtEr wrote:
For movie adaptations of space marines with live actors, wicked special effects are required. It would be very difficult to make a big budget WH40K movie, unless the budget was the LARGEST BUDGET IN CINEMA HISTORY; imagine trying to get armies of space marines realistically on the big screen? But technology has come a long way, an example being the Avengers Infinity War movie, which apparently is the most expensive movie to date. The Thanos character used a lot of good CGI, in my opinion. What do you think? Does he look about the same size as you would picture a Primarch to be? And Space Marines would be like bigger versions of the wrestler Dave Bautista's character in the movie Drax, as he's only 6'2", and yah gotta be at least 6'4" to be a marine, amirite?

Infinity War wasn't expensive because of the effects, it was expensive because at this point most of the Avengers are A-list actors; either because they started that way or the series made them one.
As far as size goes, Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit literally have battles (squad sized to um, five armies) between forces of different heights. It's not that hard.

Any live action adaptation would have to compromise too much. For 40k, animation will always be superior.

I'm less interested in Thanos is the size of a Primarch and more if the aliens that they used to attack Wakanda are why we had a Genestealer cult on Terra....

lol, those aliens did look awesome, and they had 4 arms. As for a 40K movie, definitely standalone, perhaps based off of one of the books? I've envisioned a movie loosely based on Ben Counter's Daemon World novel. It's a cool story about the forces of Chaos, with a few different groups of characters whos actions all end up relating to each other. It flows pretty nicely with a standard hero's journey plot of a tribesmen whos really pissed off at chaotically corrupt donkey-caves taking advantage of his tribe. But eventually, the story goes GLOBAL, with the entire planet starting to change, and with chaos marines landing a ship on the planet - they're like the aliens to the primitives. The book was only so much though, so for the movie, the story would need fleshing out, with more character interactions, and more space marines of course.

The movie would be a hybrid of fantasy fights and storylines intertwined with sci-fi, as the daemon world in questions civilizations are all Lord of the Rings style, medieval barbarians and Rome empire style Slaaneshi kingdoms, and of course they've all got the powers of the warp to deal with. The planet is located in the Maelstrom, but a team of Word Bearers goes there to investigate as, one of their own, a VERY high ranking sorcerer marine, has gone rogue and has fled there. A capital kingdom that serves Slaanesh mostly rules the entire planet, they even have a detachment of Violators Chaos Space Marines as elite guard, so the Word bearers get to fight them you'll get to see some sick space marine action. But there's soon to be a huge uprising by a greater daemon lord of Khorne and his daemons.

It'd be rated R, possibly split into two parts if running time gets too long, Kill Bill style, and be the most badass movie of all time, with epic fights like in Braveheart, (only with a few guns here and there when the marines join in the fray) as it deals with CHAOS, duality, the very reason why evil exists in these lower planes of existence.... it showcases this galaxy's constant plunge into darkness, focused on a planet that is the pinnacle of Chaos. The ideology of Slaanesh is explored incredibly, that rivals the sick feths that go to Bilderberg and practice satanism lol. Do what thou whilt. You'll see some NASTY fething EVIL slaaneshi characters that contrast nicely with the barbaric but still humble tribesmen who just happen to live on a damon world and take all the demonic sightings as normal. The landscapes would be incredible, the sky is never the same colour. A visual spectacle to be sure, with all kinds of different landscapes as the tribesmen journey to the slaanesh capital, and as the marines fly around the planet searching for their traitor.

I've also got an idea for a prequel, where it deals with the same Word Bearers characters, including the one that went rogue, now still a part of his legion. It'll be a shorter runtime, but it'll showcase an epic chaos invasion of an Imperial planet. Think Saving Private Ryan but instead of boats landing on a beach it's spaceships landing on a planet, drop pods and everything. Word Bearers as the undivided are leading slaaneshi, khorne, nurgle, and Tzeentch forces, using chaos marines deamons and renegade guardsmen, against a massive Imperial Guard regiment, a detachment of a couple of chapters of space marines, the PDF forces, etc.

It'll go back and forth from the chaos character's perspective and the Imperial perspective, both arguing to be righteous. And you get to see the character who betrayed the word bearers, you get to see hints of why he did it.

 BaconCatBug wrote:
Any live action adaptation would have to compromise too much. For 40k, animation will always be superior.

If it was focused around marines I agree, I think live action it would be best to get off the battle field, focus on an Inqusitor maybe?

An Inquisitor based story would probably be the easiest way to tell a coherent story and still explore a fair amount of the 40k universe. You could potentially pull in any element of 40k without it feeling forced.

Naw, when it comes to a story/plot for a WH40K movie an Inquisitor story is all EVERYBODY and their grandmother says. An inquisitor story would be like one of the newer Sherlock Holmes movies, but darker, and in space. WH40K's universe is too big to cram it all into one movie. Only focus on it's most intriguing/horrifying visually spectacular aspects. To make the movie stand out, it's gotta be something crazier. What distinguishes WH40K from other intellectual properties the most? CHAOS. Epic and god like cosmic forces...

My proposed story focuses on humans mostly, and opens up a viewer's perception of what a galaxy submerged in hell could be like... it's like a badass star wars; instead of a hero hopping around planets trying to save a princess and defeating the dark lord, it's an anti-hero, now free from chaos and obtaining a mastery over it's energies, returning to one of his spoils of war: an eldar maiden world he enslaved and demonically corrupted for his legion roughly 10 thousand years ago. But now I'm spoiling it, lol. If you've read Daemon World by Ben Counter you'll know what I mean.

SNIPPET: When the Khorne deamons claw their way out of the ground, when the greater deamon is freed from his prison, his mere energy presence makes everybody on the planet's head spin, nose bleeds... and of course deamons mutating... we need crazy psychic stuff, like Akira, but grim dark.

As for armies of giant Marines in big live action movies? Warhammer movie already did it with armies of giant Orks

focusing on the abd guys seems an unwise idea though, and an inqusitor based story could easily bring chaos in, except it would be sort of a subtle cult thing at first and slowly rachet the horror up.

@brianDavion: ugh... your playing it safe is hideous energy. Trust me, its not focusing on the bad guy lol... it is focusing on chaos, PROPER chaos representation. The book Daemon World displays the nature of chaos better than any inquisitor novel I've read. And that's just the mainlay,.,, I've got soooo much more material to add to expand... muhahahaaaa.

Unrelated fan theory I just came up with: Thanos is one of the 2 lost Primarchs hurled backwards in time by Chaos and into the womb of his "mother". This explains why Thanos doesn't look like "his" species in the comics.

Discuss

 Galef wrote:
Unrelated fan theory I just came up with: Thanos is one of the 2 lost Primarchs hurled backwards in time by Chaos and into the womb of his "mother". This explains why Thanos doesn't look like "his" species in the comics.

Discuss

Which is immediately dismissed when you know all 20 Primarchs were found and all 20 fought in the Great Crusade.

 Grimtuff wrote:

 Galef wrote:
Unrelated fan theory I just came up with: Thanos is one of the 2 lost Primarchs hurled backwards in time by Chaos and into the womb of his "mother". This explains why Thanos doesn't look like "his" species in the comics.

Discuss

Which is immediately dismissed when you know all 20 Primarchs were found and all 20 fought in the Great Crusade.

That just means Thanos was still alive by the GC and was found then and not before. Makes sense, as Emps wouldn't have been looking until then.

BTW, I'm just having a laugh and am not serious