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So people always go on about how GW sells their licences to games developers all willy-nilly and I was just thinking why has no one ever picked it up and attempted a TV series?

We all know 40k is filled with great lore and characters. I'd imagine it would be a great setting for them to do an animated show in the style of the Spawn animated series. (if you haven't seen it, it's very dark and violent)

I would think companies would love to get there hands on an IP with so much history built into it. Especially with all these streaming services bringing new shows out all the time.

What do you guys think? How'd you imagine it? And why hasn't it happened?

It probably hasn't happened because despite Warhammer being very important to you it really isn't that big of an IP on a worldwide scale.
Spawn, a single character, currently outperforms the whole of the Warhammer 40k IP and has done for the past 8 years.
Charts and graphs to back me up? Sure.....
https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?q=%2Fm%2F0mbr2,Spawn


Automatically Appended Next Post:
For a bit of fun try adding My Little Pony, Harry Potter, Kim Kardashian, Barbie or Pokemon to the search.

Jamstrap wrote:
So people always go on about how GW sells their licences to games developers all willy-nilly and I was just thinking why has no one ever picked it up and attempted a TV series?

We all know 40k is filled with great lore and characters. I'd imagine it would be a great setting for them to do an animated show in the style of the Spawn animated series. (if you haven't seen it, it's very dark and violent)

I would think companies would love to get there hands on an IP with so much history built into it. Especially with all these streaming services bringing new shows out all the time.

What do you guys think? How'd you imagine it? And why hasn't it happened?

What should be the plot and who will be the main protagonists? You will have to make sure that your program appeals to a broad audience and not only to a fringe crowd. The goal would be to be on par with Star Trek & Star Wars. Not an easy feat to accomplish. Space Marines wouldn´t be the optimal choice for this because you can´t relate to them.

What would I like to see in a 40K show? Well, my favoured faction of course: Catachans. Warfare in a tropical jungle environment. The action could also take part on different death worlds but it should still take place in a tropical rain forest. In each episode the squad in question would be assigned a mission (patrol, sabotage, hostage rescue, etc.). Special characters could be guest stars (Marbo, Straken & Harker). You would also be able to introduce the exotic and dangerous jungle wildlife of a death world to the audience.
Will we ever see something like this? No, because Catachans are an obvious Rambo ripoff. Critics would also point out that you could watch Predator & Predators instead.

 Strg Alt wrote:

Jamstrap wrote:
So people always go on about how GW sells their licences to games developers all willy-nilly and I was just thinking why has no one ever picked it up and attempted a TV series?

We all know 40k is filled with great lore and characters. I'd imagine it would be a great setting for them to do an animated show in the style of the Spawn animated series. (if you haven't seen it, it's very dark and violent)

I would think companies would love to get there hands on an IP with so much history built into it. Especially with all these streaming services bringing new shows out all the time.

What do you guys think? How'd you imagine it? And why hasn't it happened?

What should be the plot and who will be the main protagonists? You will have to make sure that your program appeals to a broad audience and not only to a fringe crowd. The goal would be to be on par with Star Trek & Star Wars. Not an easy feat to accomplish. Space Marines wouldn´t be the optimal choice for this because you can´t relate to them.

What would I like to see in a 40K show? Well, my favoured faction of course: Catachans. Warfare in a tropical jungle environment. The action could also take part on different death worlds but it should still take place in a tropical rain forest. In each episode the squad in question would be assigned a mission (patrol, sabotage, hostage rescue, etc.). Special characters could be guest stars (Marbo, Straken & Harker). You would also be able to introduce the exotic and dangerous jungle wildlife of a death world to the audience.
Will we ever see something like this? No, because Catachans are an obvious Rambo ripoff. Critics would also point out that you could watch Predator & Predators instead.

...Are you REALLY sure that you can't relate to space marines? Some of the best episodes of the Clone Wars show involved plots heavily involving the soldiers, and they are LITERALLY all the same guy.

Your best bet for this would be something like a Netflix, as they tend to go for more fringy type stuff, like Black Mirror and Stranger Things, that the majors would likely turn down.

That being said, it will probably never happen for the same reason that the Fables tv show never happened: the creator/IP holder is too controlling.

 vaklor4 wrote:

 Strg Alt wrote:

Jamstrap wrote:
So people always go on about how GW sells their licences to games developers all willy-nilly and I was just thinking why has no one ever picked it up and attempted a TV series?

We all know 40k is filled with great lore and characters. I'd imagine it would be a great setting for them to do an animated show in the style of the Spawn animated series. (if you haven't seen it, it's very dark and violent)

I would think companies would love to get there hands on an IP with so much history built into it. Especially with all these streaming services bringing new shows out all the time.

What do you guys think? How'd you imagine it? And why hasn't it happened?

What should be the plot and who will be the main protagonists? You will have to make sure that your program appeals to a broad audience and not only to a fringe crowd. The goal would be to be on par with Star Trek & Star Wars. Not an easy feat to accomplish. Space Marines wouldn´t be the optimal choice for this because you can´t relate to them.

What would I like to see in a 40K show? Well, my favoured faction of course: Catachans. Warfare in a tropical jungle environment. The action could also take part on different death worlds but it should still take place in a tropical rain forest. In each episode the squad in question would be assigned a mission (patrol, sabotage, hostage rescue, etc.). Special characters could be guest stars (Marbo, Straken & Harker). You would also be able to introduce the exotic and dangerous jungle wildlife of a death world to the audience.
Will we ever see something like this? No, because Catachans are an obvious Rambo ripoff. Critics would also point out that you could watch Predator & Predators instead.

...Are you REALLY sure that you can't relate to space marines? Some of the best episodes of the Clone Wars show involved plots heavily involving the soldiers, and they are LITERALLY all the same guy.

I watched a couple of the Clone Wars episodes and they were not my cup of tea.
I am als pretty sure about my comment concerning the Space Marines. Not applicable to a broad audience. I liked the Night Lord trilogy by ADB but my taste isn´t important. You will have to win the hearts & minds of people with your product who aren´t fans from the get-go to be successful.

Another key reason is merchandising, who would get the cash, GW would want it, in addition if it proved popular could GW handle the sudden demand ?

If I was gonna do a 40k TV show I'd focus it around an Inqusitor. because an Inqusitor would allow me to,gradually, explore every faucet of the universe.

I like the idea of it being focused around the inquisition.. That way your main focus is relatable but you also can be thrown into different stories and words on a regular basis.

But as above I don't see it happening but Netflix has picked up stranger things lately (no pun intended)

 Strg Alt wrote:

Jamstrap wrote:
So people always go on about how GW sells their licences to games developers all willy-nilly and I was just thinking why has no one ever picked it up and attempted a TV series?

We all know 40k is filled with great lore and characters. I'd imagine it would be a great setting for them to do an animated show in the style of the Spawn animated series. (if you haven't seen it, it's very dark and violent)

I would think companies would love to get there hands on an IP with so much history built into it. Especially with all these streaming services bringing new shows out all the time.

What do you guys think? How'd you imagine it? And why hasn't it happened?

What should be the plot and who will be the main protagonists? You will have to make sure that your program appeals to a broad audience and not only to a fringe crowd. The goal would be to be on par with Star Trek & Star Wars. Not an easy feat to accomplish. Space Marines wouldn´t be the optimal choice for this because you can´t relate to them.

What would I like to see in a 40K show? Well, my favoured faction of course: Catachans. Warfare in a tropical jungle environment. The action could also take part on different death worlds but it should still take place in a tropical rain forest. In each episode the squad in question would be assigned a mission (patrol, sabotage, hostage rescue, etc.). Special characters could be guest stars (Marbo, Straken & Harker). You would also be able to introduce the exotic and dangerous jungle wildlife of a death world to the audience.
Will we ever see something like this? No, because Catachans are an obvious Rambo ripoff. Critics would also point out that you could watch Predator & Predators instead.

This idea might be a bit odd, but hear me out. Which IG regiment could mostly relate to some kind of MASH-type show? Imagine, MASH, but grimdark!

I used to think 40k as a movie or TV show could be awesome but most likely it would go the way of Star Wars now. Forced diversity, bland "strong female characters" and with a political agenda dictating the narrative. No thanks.

Hollywood lost interest because gw was too demanding they insisted on an all English cast and wanted direct control of too much.

That was back in the early 2000's and they've not tried since.

hobojebus wrote:
Hollywood lost interest because gw was too demanding they insisted on an all English cast and wanted direct control of too much.

That was back in the early 2000's and they've not tried since.

Thing is GW was probably in the right to protect its IP like that. There are a lot of studios and directors in Hollywood that would - well - they'd do to Warhammer what sony has done to Peter Rabbit in the latest film. Ergo all they want is your franchises fanbase for the launch day seats in the cinemas and the title and some very basic themes.

If you sign over all control you can very very easily end up with something that doesn't even capture the most basic elements of the franchise, even from big names in the industry.



I would say Warhammer is a strong fanchise if they kept it to focusing on marines; most people know of warhammer and they know marines. I'd say way more than people are aware of magic the gathering and any of its lore. In a casual way warhammer is well known so a generic "Rambo the Marine" style film would work .

See 40k marines would be a bit more difficult to do, but 30k marines are essentially humans that have been enhanced, not all legions had the psychoindotrination that the 40k marines have, either way it would be better to have a human character see the marines and take it from that perspective, rather than from the marines.

 Overread wrote:
. I'd say way more than people are aware of magic the gathering and any of its lore.

Nope.
https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=%2Fm%2F0mbr2,Spawn,%2Fm%2F021dvx,%2Fm%2F04rhz

Because there are two reasons to license an IP for a TV show/movie/etc:

1) The IP has something unique that you can't easily get anywhere else.

or

2) The IP has massive brand recognition that will get people to buy it even if they know nothing about it.

GW has neither of these. Anyone who wants to make a 40k thing can just rip off the same things GW ripped off, and GW isn't nearly big enough for their brand recognition to matter with the kind of mainstream audience that needs to buy in to a new show for it to be profitable.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Alex Kolodotschko wrote:

 Overread wrote:
. I'd say way more than people are aware of magic the gathering and any of its lore.

Nope.
https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=%2Fm%2F0mbr2,Spawn,%2Fm%2F021dvx,%2Fm%2F04rhz

I'm not really understanding your point here. MTG out-trends 40k by a ~4:1 ratio on that graph, depending on the exact point.

 Alex Kolodotschko wrote:
It probably hasn't happened because despite Warhammer being very important to you it really isn't that big of an IP on a worldwide scale.
Spawn, a single character, currently outperforms the whole of the Warhammer 40k IP and has done for the past 8 years.
Charts and graphs to back me up? Sure.....
https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?q=%2Fm%2F0mbr2,Spawn


Automatically Appended Next Post:
For a bit of fun try adding My Little Pony, Harry Potter, Kim Kardashian, Barbie or Pokemon to the search.

That's not really how it works. People don't typically search for "Warhammer 40,000". If you search the more general term "Warhammer" you'll notice a huge September 2017 spike, which would coincide when 8th started to hit it's stride.

@Peregrine. Read Overead's post and that section of quote carefully. It's been hidden in there somewhere but he's assuming that Warhammer is bigger than Magic.

@Daedalus81 Sure, I know that that's not exactly how it works but it was a useful and quick way to explain that GW really ain't that big compared to the perception of a lot of people on this forum.

I'd be willing to bet if you stopped random people in a street you'd encounter far more who are aware of Warhammer and Space marines than who've even heard of Magic the Gathering.

Yes Magic might well rank far higher in online searches; the community in itself for magic is likely larger*, but I'd say the casual "average joe" (who is honestly more likely to be the prime target of a larger tv/film release) is going to have more likelihood of having heard of Warhammer.



Of course this might well vary area to area and might also be heavily influenced by the "in thing" at schools. All I know is if I were to mention Warhammer to random friends/family who have no geek connections they'd likely go "Oh yeah those expensive models." Whilst if I mentioned MTG chances are they wouldn't even have a clue.


I'd also say that GW's marketing of Warhammer means that Space Marines are known as a force, whilst in Magic the very nature of their blocks and system of release means that they've really not got the same focus on characters or even a race/species.



*although as they are not separate distinct groups its a bit of a complicated point to compare since I suspect there's healthy portion of warhammer players who also play magic

@Overead
I'm sure that your experience is very different to that of many others.
In the UK, GW is very well established with a store in most towns. Generally we're never further than 50 miles from an official GW store.
Compare that to the huge distances that some Americans and Aussies have to travel to get a game or buy supplies and it starts to become very apparent.

I always found the problem to be the vastness of the universe. You have to explain a lot of the world to get people to understand how it works. For instance, if the focus is on humanity the Galaxy is full of a vast variety of aliens only a handful of which are galaxy wide threats (Orks, nids,Necrons, Tau, Eldar, etc...). There is a parallel dimension called the Warp which contains a large number of entities known as Daemons that feed off of sentient life’s emotions who sometimes manifest in the real world to cause havoc. The humans in the story are the Imperium of Mankind led by the mostly dead God Emperor, through his High Lords for over 10,000 years. He created the Adeptus Astartes super soldiers who are genetically engineered humans. In order to help conquer the Galaxy the Adeptus Mechanicus of Mars help maintain technology whose functionality is more akin to religion than science. The Primarchs who are the Emperor’s sons(by lab experiments) led the Adeptus Astartes to conquer the Galaxy until the Daemons tricked them into Civil War.

And this is just to give an overview. This is only a fraction of what you need to know of the world. Most TV shows have the benefit of a small mythos to start with before shaping their universe. It would be very difficult to create a 40k tv show.

Most TV shows based on existing IP like Star Wars and Marvel have the benefit of being in the Popular Culture. People know what Jedi are and how they interact with their world. People know who Iron Man was before Civil War happened. Otherwise a lot of these movies would have failed. “Who is this Tony Stark and why does he want to stop superheroes from being super?”

Say what you will about Civil War, but it doesn’t introduce the Marvel Cinimatic universe as well as Captain America or Iron Man did.

Games Workshop would have to do the same. Introduce small elements of the world to get people to slowly understand what’s going on.

 Alex Kolodotschko wrote:

@Daedalus81 Sure, I know that that's not exactly how it works but it was a useful and quick way to explain that GW really ain't that big compared to the perception of a lot of people on this forum.

I think you might be surprised especially with all the big hits for video games they've had (Space Marine, Total War). With a market cap approaching $1B people will start to turn their heads.

I think a Rogue Trader would be an ideal focal character for a show. It would allow diversity of characters and plots. It would also allow characters who are not insanely pro-imperial fanatics, they might be more relatable to audience. They could visit many different worlds and even encounter some Xenos without it instantly devolving to slaughter.

Absolutely not anything Space Marine focused. I say this a long time Space Marine player, Space Marines are make boring characters and their stories are focused on war and thus one dimensional and boring. They're fine for a war game, but they make poor protagonists.

 Alex Kolodotschko wrote:
@Overead
I'm sure that your experience is very different to that of many others.
In the UK, GW is very well established with a store in most towns. Generally we're never further than 50 miles from an official GW store.
Compare that to the huge distances that some Americans and Aussies have to travel to get a game or buy supplies and it starts to become very apparent.

I think he could be wrong but also have some degree of truth in his idea that 40k is bigger then magic in some respects.

More people have proably HEARD of Magic the Gathering, Sorry folks maybe in the UK 40k is bigger but the UK lacks the population to support a big sci-fi franchise (and 40k will need to be big eneugh to justify the effects budget) so they'll be shooting for a strong US presence.

now that said having heard of the game and being a bit familer with it is two very differant things. Ask that same person whose heard of MtG what the STORYLINE is, and they'd not be able to tell you, Meanwhile just about anyone with a "casual nerd knowledge" can tell you some generalities of 40k. MtG might have a bigger following, but 40k has produced internationally known memes on a much wider level.

My dream for a 40k on the screen would be the opening trilogy of the Horus Heresy series.

Horus Rising, False Gods and Galaxy in Flames would be perfect for a trilogy movie set. Plenty of character development and pace of story that can be adapted for a 2-2.5 hour movie a piece.

I understand it's different in the UK, but over here in the US the vast, vast majority of people have no idea what Warhammer is or what it's about, and draw an even larger blank if you ask them about Games Workshop as a company. They may or may not have seen something somewhere... but there really isn't the brand recognition we as gamers think there is.

I've met more people who know about it from video games than the actual tabletop games.

I'm curious what is going to happen in regards to licensing for the Lord of the Rings. Amazon is dumping half a BILLION dollars into creating a new LOTR TV show to try and take over the space that will be left by the end of Game of Thrones. Will GW be able to make models from the series?

As for a 40k series. I'm split, I think an animated collection of stories similar to 'The Animatrix' could be very cool. I would allow for different styles to used and an anthology format would allow you to cover a lot of ground.

I don't think you need a massive built in audience to make it work.. Most films and TV shows are made with people knowing nothing about them. Or nothing would ever be made.

With good marketing and more importantly a well made show/movie I think it could work.

I say an animation because it would probably be easier and cheaper than live action.

Jamstrap wrote:
I don't think you need a massive built in audience to make it work.. Most films and TV shows are made with people knowing nothing about them. Or nothing would ever be made.

The difference is that shows where nobody knows about it generally don't hand over tons of money in licensing payments to borrow an IP. If you aren't getting brand recognition out of the deal then why buy the 40k IP?

I have a friend who works in merchandising for Warner Brothers. He's very aware of the GW brand, consumer consciousness about the company's products, and where people's interests intersect with the projects he works on. He was tangentially involved in the LOTR stuff and has had some dealings with GW over the years on other issues.

From what he's shared with me, the perception around GW is that the company's IP is interesting but issues exist with brand loyalty. While we haven't drilled down on what that means, my impression was that people age out of the game and never come back. There's nothing to demonstrate 40k would have mass appeal sufficient for building a larger entertainment brand.

So while I would love to see a 40k TV show, I don't think there's enough people like me for it to be viable.