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Adventures of the missing legions!

I wouldn't read too much into the logo. It's going to take a while before any assets are created specifically for the project itself.

^^ Agree. It could also just point to the corruption and decay that exists within the leviathan Imperium of Man.

One things for certain; it's unlikely to be a Gorka Morka tale...!

That logo could suggest either Custodes or HH but could be as well just a logo.

 His Master's Voice wrote:
I wouldn't read too much into the logo. It's going to take a while before any assets are created specifically for the project itself.

Exactly. There's precisely no chance that the first live action series we're getting will be Horus Heresy era stuff, it's too wide, too hard to adapt, too confusing for casuals, doesn't match the '40k' what most video gamers and people who vaguely know about Warhammer have experienced.

Henry Cavill's instagram post on the matter did state 'a Warhammer Cinematic Universe' though, so there's maybe the chance years down the line. It would be far better suited to an animated adaption mind.

For a first-time offer on a mainstream platform they will have to play to their strengths and core concepts, which are Space Marines and bombastic battle scenes.

HH is the prime backdrop for this concept and has the primarchs intact, who provide the necessary korean boy band material, drama and intrigue to keep the series going. It's basically tailor-made for this format.

 BertBert wrote:
For a first-time offer on a mainstream platform they will have to play to their strengths and core concepts, which are Space Marines and bombastic battle scenes.

HH is the prime backdrop for this concept and has the primarchs intact, who provide the necessary korean boy band material, drama and intrigue to keep the series going. It's basically tailor-made for this format.

I disagree.

Necromunda as a setting is far more relatable.

You get the hell scape of 40K in one easy package, with limited amounts of the more fantastical elements.

HH is a brother on brother bloodbath, that's not good feels. Space Marines saving a Guard army from xenos or chaos is good feels and relatable. Maybe with an inquisitorial scheme subplot so it's not just a 12 hour battle report.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:

I disagree.

Necromunda as a setting is far more relatable.

You get the hell scape of 40K in one easy package, with limited amounts of the more fantastical elements.

I don't disagree that Necromunda could make for a compelling story, but not as an introduction of 40k to a new mainstream audience. I'd like to see it, but I don't believe it will happen.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
I think I’ve read one Eisenhorn book, and don’t really remember it that well. So those more versed in those specific stories can say more.

Eisenhorn might be OK book, but it's crap 40K. So is pretty much anything Abnett writes, though. He doesn't give a damn about lore and does his own thing, which is fine if taken in isolation but if you want to make more than one 40K show, the dissonance would be massive. Lightsabers anyone? Magic language stronger than chaos gods anyone can use? Perpetuals? Also, Abnett was the dude who wrote the script for Ultramarines the movie and frankly, the script was weakest part of this which is really an accomplishment given the rest was a burning pile of gak

Cain would be a much better idea, and funnily enough, Cavill would make a much better Cain than an Inquisitor any day.

I wish they picked something by Peter Fehervari but alas, that's proper grimdark with little grimdumb and GW hates that these days...

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
I feel like live action 40k is doomed to failure because it will be near impossible to capture the feel of the universe without it coming across terrible

Astartes managed to do that and that was one dude project, sooo...

Also, that's why I think they should pick Cain. Enough humor to offset grimdarkiness and a rather relatable cast of characters.

 lord_blackfang wrote:
HH is a brother on brother bloodbath, that's not good feels. Space Marines saving a Guard army from xenos or chaos is good feels and relatable. Maybe with an inquisitorial scheme subplot so it's not just a 12 hour battle report.

The way licensed properties usually go, we'll end up with Horsey Hearsay, a whimsical romantic comedy of errors in the social circles of horseracing pundits and bookmakers

Given they’ve mentioned a Cinematic Universe? Kind of do it like Marvel’s lead in to Infinity War.

Use something akin to Necromunda to introduce where mankind is up to. Basically any Hive World will do. Ideally invent one, so Us Nerds will never know whether the Imperium will win.

First one or two have Cult activity being the focus. Then escalate, movie by movie, until you get A Honking Geet Battle Movie.

What each movie should or shouldn’t contain I’ll leave to the individual. Just….save the Astartes for their true shock value.

Just give me some animated stuff with the quality of Riot's Arcane for warhammer.

 lord_blackfang wrote:
HH is a brother on brother bloodbath, that's not good feels. Space Marines saving a Guard army from xenos or chaos is good feels and relatable. Maybe with an inquisitorial scheme subplot so it's not just a 12 hour battle report.

How is anything 40k “good feels and relatable“?

I think he would do a great Votann series... We really need more lore XD

 Grumpy Gnome wrote:

 lord_blackfang wrote:
HH is a brother on brother bloodbath, that's not good feels. Space Marines saving a Guard army from xenos or chaos is good feels and relatable. Maybe with an inquisitorial scheme subplot so it's not just a 12 hour battle report.

How is anything 40k “good feels and relatable“?

An Imperial Guard focused war movie would be relatable to a certain extent...certainly wouldn't be good feels mind.

 Genoside07 wrote:
I want to be hopeful, but Amazon has killed way too many licensed properties, I don't want a teenage rom-com set in the 40k universe where a Tau and Ogryn fall in love. Henry Cavill was part of the attraction for Witcher and it sounded like he tried to keep it aligned with the lore but it ends with what the studio wants.

You are going to have a gender-fluid rom-com. Fixed that for you.

 Irbis wrote:

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
I feel like live action 40k is doomed to failure because it will be near impossible to capture the feel of the universe without it coming across terrible

Astartes managed to do that and that was one dude project, sooo...

You talking about the animated thing?

You'll note my post that you quoted says "live action". I think animated stuff can get away with a lot more. Live action adds a layer that makes it hard to blend the absurd with the real.

 Grumpy Gnome wrote:

 lord_blackfang wrote:
HH is a brother on brother bloodbath, that's not good feels. Space Marines saving a Guard army from xenos or chaos is good feels and relatable. Maybe with an inquisitorial scheme subplot so it's not just a 12 hour battle report.

How is anything 40k “good feels and relatable“?

Triumph of the human spirit.

 Londinium wrote:

 Grumpy Gnome wrote:

 lord_blackfang wrote:
HH is a brother on brother bloodbath, that's not good feels. Space Marines saving a Guard army from xenos or chaos is good feels and relatable. Maybe with an inquisitorial scheme subplot so it's not just a 12 hour battle report.

How is anything 40k “good feels and relatable“?

An Imperial Guard focused war movie would be relatable to a certain extent...certainly wouldn't be good feels mind.

I've always wanted them to do a Band of Brothers style Gaunts Ghosts series. I really hope it isn't the Horus Heresy. Not to start with at any rate.

I think Eisenhorn is the way to go first.

 Irbis wrote:

I wish they picked something by Peter Fehervari but alas, that's proper grimdark with little grimdumb and GW hates that these days...

I concur - madness and insanity with the minimum required 40k battles isn't what they want. Indeed I am amazed they still publish his books (for anyone who doesn't know - https://www.trackofwords.com/2020/10/31/a-travellers-guide-to-the-dark-coil/)

 Flinty wrote:
To be honest I would be happy with something like this

Agreed. Do the Dreadnooot with stop motion figure and the Genestealers with stuntmen wearing rubber suits. This will keep the costs down.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:

 Grumpy Gnome wrote:

 lord_blackfang wrote:
HH is a brother on brother bloodbath, that's not good feels. Space Marines saving a Guard army from xenos or chaos is good feels and relatable. Maybe with an inquisitorial scheme subplot so it's not just a 12 hour battle report.

How is anything 40k “good feels and relatable“?

Triumph of the human spirit.

Despite the Imperium, that then often crushes said human spirit.

Maybe if you are a fan of Brazil style bureaucracy its great?

A lot of it remains the reaction to the destruction of communities done by governments in the 80's. Hollywood doesn't seem to run with that oddly. I didn't see much of Constantine but I don't remember it having the backdrop of the convulsions in 80's London.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:

 Overread wrote:

 warboss wrote:
I hope that his status as an executive producer will help the show stay on focus and consistent with the core material. Not everything that Amazon produces is garbage so there is hope.

GW are also pretty hot on keeping on top of the presentation of the lore. I think its one reason some bigger studios in video games don't sign with them for the IP, because GW 100% would be breathing down their necks the whole time. Same reason we've likely never seen a Hollywood spacemarines film. GW know that a big part of the draw of their core business is the lore and that if they abuse that too much it will break and that destroys a huge area of returning customers and attracting new customers.

Hence my theory regarding Warhammer+. A sort of Expo to demonstrate Acceptable Use. Also a way for GW to actually figure out what they feel is acceptable and presentable.

Adding deeper “information”, once upon a time I was told by an unreliable source that GW had been approached in the past, but always wanted to keep Marketing Rights, scotching any interest quite quickly. Almost certainly not true, but putting it out there in case others might be able to corroborate or even confirm.

I think the thing is places like Hollywood like to basically get everything in the contract on their terms. There's more than a few horror stories of authors and such signing big contracts and then finding that they are basically out of the loop and have almost no influence over what's being made with their stuff till the contract is over. GW I think are a touch more experienced plus their main income is healthy, they don't "need" Hollywood.
So they can afford to be picky. Plus they know at the end of the day a film or such is an injection of money not a steady income from their models and the last thing they want to do is harm their model income. Especially as so much of the manufacture and production and design is all in-house with their own staff in the UK so they can't just downscale or such.


Warhammer+ was very much GW investing as much as they could justify to create shows as a showcase. Plus also viewer numbers and other data that they've harvested from it which can be easily used to not just showcase what kind of show you can make with their stuff; but also what kind of market reception there is. I'm sure there are many boards with executives worried about doing a grim-dark setting and that it would get a hostile reception or not enough reception and all. So having stuff that you can show off that works is a big boon.

Also stuff like JoyToy, MacFarlane etc. All proof positive tie-in merch will sell. And let’s be brutally honest, that’s where movie properties make the really big bucks. Has been ever since Kenner and Star Wars.

 Overread wrote:

So they can afford to be picky. Plus they know at the end of the day a film or such is an injection of money not a steady income from their models and the last thing they want to do is harm their model income. Especially as so much of the manufacture and production and design is all in-house with their own staff in the UK so they can't just downscale or such.

I can't imagine anything being so bad it harmed the model income though. I'm not sure that's possible unless there's some kind of scandal around the production. Either it's true to the source material and a hit, in which case it helps them. It's true to the source material and not a hit, in which case we all just move on with our lives (no-one who is currently a 40K fan is going to give up on playing it because they made a bad TV show.)
Or on the other hand, it goes in a weird, not true to the source material direction and fails, in which case again, the source material stays the same and everyone just ignores it. Or it isn't true to the source material and is a huge hit, in which case I'd expect the source material to move in the direction of the show. And in that case, they might lose some existing fans, but they'll gain far more.

Had the Amazon LotR series been a bigger hit, you can bet more copies of the books would have been sold that year than normal. It had a mixed response, but I'd bet book sales are still up a little. But even if it had been a disaster (or y'know, even if you think it *was* a disaster), book sales wouldn't have actually gone down on the baseline. Indeed, all the "it's really bad because it's not true to the source material" stuff would have probably made them go up regardless.

deano2099 wrote:

 Overread wrote:

So they can afford to be picky. Plus they know at the end of the day a film or such is an injection of money not a steady income from their models and the last thing they want to do is harm their model income. Especially as so much of the manufacture and production and design is all in-house with their own staff in the UK so they can't just downscale or such.

I can't imagine anything being so bad it harmed the model income though. I'm not sure that's possible unless there's some kind of scandal around the production. Either it's true to the source material and a hit, in which case it helps them. It's true to the source material and not a hit, in which case we all just move on with our lives (no-one who is currently a 40K fan is going to give up on playing it because they made a bad TV show.)
Or on the other hand, it goes in a weird, not true to the source material direction and fails, in which case again, the source material stays the same and everyone just ignores it. Or it isn't true to the source material and is a huge hit, in which case I'd expect the source material to move in the direction of the show. And in that case, they might lose some existing fans, but they'll gain far more.

Had the Amazon LotR series been a bigger hit, you can bet more copies of the books would have been sold that year than normal. It had a mixed response, but I'd bet book sales are still up a little. But even if it had been a disaster (or y'know, even if you think it *was* a disaster), book sales wouldn't have actually gone down on the baseline. Indeed, all the "it's really bad because it's not true to the source material" stuff would have probably made them go up regardless.

I think the thing is GW wants to market out their IP and part of that is retaining a strong hold over what that IP is. IF they allow it to get too watered down it no longer links up with the other stuff they are marketing.
Everything GW does wants to fuel their core business in some form. If you make a super casual "we just got the names right and that's about it" hollywood film then the fans of that might not translate into fans of miniatures or BL books or such. Sure there'd be an upswing of sales, but it might not be as good as if the film were faithful to the source material.

Also lets not forget GW are passionate staff in many of their roles. They like as not want to make sure what's made with their stuff is faithful because its "their" stuff. The same way and author wants their book to be faithfully retold and such.


GW just don't want something like the BBC America Discworld series to happen; which can so easily happen when you just sign over rights to producers. GW want a certain something when they sell out their IP and its not just the royalties and marketing opportunities.

I dunno, GW themselves put out the series of YA books, and it was only the fans that got angry about the IP being watered down.

deano2099 wrote:
I dunno, GW themselves put out the series of YA books, and it was only the fans that got angry about the IP being watered down.

Yeah but there's a difference between adjusting some parts of the story to present to a different age group* and outright changing the entire story so that Eisenhorn is a transvestite ork down on his luck with gambling debts.





*which lets face it mostly means cutting out some of the gore and blood in fights and a few mature words.

I think we can all agree that people are going to piss their pants about something .

I'm just keen to see what they go for. Probably going to be a while before we see anything solid.