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I wanted to chat with you all about the growing cinematic presence of our beloved universe. Specifically, I'd like to highlight how the Pariah Nexus series and other upcoming projects have the potential to attract a wider audience, including those who may not be tabletop gamers or miniature painters.

The Pariah Nexus series, in particular, has been a fascinating step forward. It showcases the ability of Warhammer 40k to tell compelling stories that appeal to a broader demographic. The impressive visuals and engaging narratives have managed to draw in folks who might not have explored the intricacies of the tabletop hobby before.

One thing that truly stands out about Warhammer 40k is its rich lore. It's an expansive and intricate universe (seriously, there are over 500+ books breaking down the lore of this game, imagine this content put into a series format) that can capture the interest of a diverse audience. Whether you're into the politics, the religious aspects, the epic scale of conflict or simply like ORKKKKKKKKS, there's something within this lore for everyone.



Now, shifting gears a bit, let's talk about the upcoming Amazon series starring Henry Cavill. It's a project that's generating quite a buzz, and understandably so. Having an actor of Cavill's caliber involved in the Warhammer 40k universe is an exciting prospect. It opens up possibilities for epic battles, intriguing characters, and stunning visuals that could make our heads spin. I'm genuinely looking forward to seeing how this series unfolds, and I'm sure many of you are as well. If you are interested in this subject I have also created a post here https://www.adeptusars.com/news/epic-battles-endless-lore-why-warhammer-40000-is-destined-for-cinematic-greatness .
Lore is what got me into this hobby. I'm not really the type of guy to read lots of books, but Warhammer really gets me going. Probably one of my favourite parts of this universe, it also adds to the painting experience (like, next time you paint a miniature try listening to an audio book talking about it and it's history, or a youtube video, suddenly Mephiston becomes even more badass, somehow).

What are your thoughts on this? I have a strong feeling that if the upcoming amazon series has good animation, is gonna be a hit, and for good reason.
tldr: Warhammer+ is good but... Imagine if this was available to a wider audience. Nobody outside the Warhammer universe knows about Warhammer+, but the content on it could appeal a bigger audience. The lore is just that good.

That's the whole reason GW started Warhammer+. They want studios to buy their IP licence and make stuff.

The problem is that many big studios don't want GW. GW is very protective of its IP and that means breathing down the neck of creative studios working with their licence. Meanwhile many studios (esp once you get to the big ones) don't want that at all. They want to buy your licence and then do what they want.

For that reason we likely will never see a Hollywood film of GW's IPs.


Warhammer+ was a move to try and bring a lot of fan content under the GW official umbrella; shut down 3rd parties profiting off GW's IP without a licence and also showcase their lore and setting as well as show that there were viable viewing numbers (Warhammer + members) to studios and groups to then attract them to work with GW.

GW wants to push into media; they 100% know that its the kind of thing that can sell their stuff. They've seen it first hand with Lord of the Rings and GW are very aware that new blood is essential to their long term survival as a firm.

They want to buy your licence and then do what they want.

Not just that, but they want merchandising rights. Toys, video games, comic books, board games, funko pops, lunchboxes, t-shirts, pinball machines, candy wrappers, keychains, deodorant, beer koozies, etc. Thing is, GW is more than capable of exploiting its own IP in this manner and is already doing so for many of those categories, and is unlikely to surrender those rights over to a studio or allow them non-exclusive competing rights, etc. As a result, GW IPs are not nearly as exploitable or profitable as they need to be to really be worth a damn to really any studio - the big ones can see bigger returns throwing their money at original IPs, comic books franchises they own directly or through a subsidiary, young adult fiction trilogies, etc. and the small studios can't afford to take the risk that theywill see an ROI from the film/tv rights alone to offset the loss of merch rights.

if a big studio really wanted GWs IP they wouldn't negotiate with GW, they would buy GW to get it all

its essentially not worth the price when its not hard for the media industries to keep churning out much cheaper pap as they are currently doing

 Overread wrote:
That's the whole reason GW started Warhammer+. They want studios to buy their IP licence and make stuff.

The problem is that many big studios don't want GW. GW is very protective of its IP and that means breathing down the neck of creative studios working with their licence. Meanwhile many studios (esp once you get to the big ones) don't want that at all. They want to buy your licence and then do what they want.

For that reason we likely will never see a Hollywood film of GW's IPs.


Warhammer+ was a move to try and bring a lot of fan content under the GW official umbrella; shut down 3rd parties profiting off GW's IP without a licence and also showcase their lore and setting as well as show that there were viable viewing numbers (Warhammer + members) to studios and groups to then attract them to work with GW.

GW wants to push into media; they 100% know that its the kind of thing that can sell their stuff. They've seen it first hand with Lord of the Rings and GW are very aware that new blood is essential to their long term survival as a firm.

I disagree. GW have shown of late they’re happy to issue licenses to 3rd Parties, something they were previously very wary of doing. But that was under Wotshisface.

Warhammer+ I think was and is as much about GW figuring out how they themselves want their IP translated to tv and movies. Something they can point prospective licensees to as a benchmark. Because knowing you want to protect your IP, and knowing what you might be happy with are different considerations. And this is certainly one way to do it, and it allows GW complete creative control, which is pretty rare in media.

leopard wrote:
if a big studio really wanted GWs IP they wouldn't negotiate with GW, they would buy GW to get it all

its essentially not worth the price when its not hard for the media industries to keep churning out much cheaper pap as they are currently doing

GW isn't just IP though, it's also a manufacturer.
Its not like Disney buying Lucasfilm and getting the IP it owned, then leasing that IP to companies such as Hasbro and EA.

Didn't they though? But then the movies were crap, the merch didn't sell at all, to a point that even the older merch that did sell, stopped selling as much, and then they retconed and added even more of the Mouse flair to it, and the old fans left, new didn't come and suddenly Lucasfilm stoped to be too big to fail.
I mean a lot of people after End Game thought that the marvel cinematic universe, with its series , that cost mountains of dollars to make, will make Marvel and the Mouse even more money.

Maybe it is good that GW isn't trying to make a 3 hour long x3 trilogy, because if it flopped a box of troops would start to cost twice as much, for all we know.

leopard wrote:
if a big studio really wanted GWs IP they wouldn't negotiate with GW, they would buy GW to get it all

its essentially not worth the price when its not hard for the media industries to keep churning out much cheaper pap as they are currently doing

Nah. Studios don't want to deal with being a toy and plastics manufacturer, they want someone else to do that for them. Too much of GWs value is predicated upon their expertise in sculpting and producing miniatures, rather than the IPs they own, that has no real value to anyone that doesn't want to be a toy manufacturer, basically. Anyone who did buy GW would either need to be willing to become an industrial manufacturer or have a plan to dismantle/spin off the rest of the company into a separate entity.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Gert wrote:

leopard wrote:
if a big studio really wanted GWs IP they wouldn't negotiate with GW, they would buy GW to get it all

its essentially not worth the price when its not hard for the media industries to keep churning out much cheaper pap as they are currently doing

GW isn't just IP though, it's also a manufacturer.
Its not like Disney buying Lucasfilm and getting the IP it owned, then leasing that IP to companies such as Hasbro and EA.

This.

I feel we're going to learn more on Warhammer Day.

Beyond that, you can always trust GW to never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity.

Meh, I've been a hardcore 40k fan for decades. I don't own Warhammer+ and I've never seen anything from it. I don't even care about it.

A 40k movie would be awful. I used to think it was a good idea until I got old and watched every franchise I once loved die. Which is now happening to 40k.

If someone thinks a movie about space Nazis commiting genocide would fly nowadays... May I refer to an incident in Spain a short while ago.
It would be endless bad publicity for GW.

The number one reason it'll never happen... Merchandise.
Imagine if Star Wars was a long standing game with rules. You've been wanting to include a Rose Tico model in your army but GW charges 42 dollars for her. A box of Resistance Troopers is $60. So $102 for a squad and a leader.
But now that the Mouse House is making the merch, you can get Resistance Troopers keychains for $2.50, Rose Tico action figures for free in any dumpster, and if you find the right K-Mart they have the entire Snoke Vat playset with limited Knight of Ren for $5 because the box is damaged.

When you can buy an action figure of a Space Marine at Walmart for less than the cost of a GW space marine... Warhammer will officially be dead.

No 3D printer needed. Just Black Friday and Rollback deals.

 Gert wrote:

leopard wrote:
if a big studio really wanted GWs IP they wouldn't negotiate with GW, they would buy GW to get it all

its essentially not worth the price when its not hard for the media industries to keep churning out much cheaper pap as they are currently doing

GW isn't just IP though, it's also a manufacturer.
Its not like Disney buying Lucasfilm and getting the IP it owned, then leasing that IP to companies such as Hasbro and EA.

Given the company has been valued at *quick google* a $4.18bn. That’s…a lot of money just to get the IP for something which whilst growing in wider awareness remains pretty niche. Especially when on top of that? You have to spend even more money to make and market the film.

Sure, you could potentially be onto a winner, especially if you can keep a tight rein on production costs, and land a solid box office hit. But that’s a massive, massive risk.

Or, you can greatly reduce that risk by paying an amount for the license, perhaps with a split in the merchandising rights and income. Then shell out for production and marketing. If that’s a box office hit, let alone box office smash? You could well be making a profit overall from the first film.

chaos0xomega wrote:

leopard wrote:
if a big studio really wanted GWs IP they wouldn't negotiate with GW, they would buy GW to get it all

its essentially not worth the price when its not hard for the media industries to keep churning out much cheaper pap as they are currently doing

Nah. Studios don't want to deal with being a toy and plastics manufacturer, they want someone else to do that for them. Too much of GWs value is predicated upon their expertise in sculpting and producing miniatures, rather than the IPs they own, that has no real value to anyone that doesn't want to be a toy manufacturer, basically. Anyone who did buy GW would either need to be willing to become an industrial manufacturer or have a plan to dismantle/spin off the rest of the company into a separate entity.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Gert wrote:

leopard wrote:
if a big studio really wanted GWs IP they wouldn't negotiate with GW, they would buy GW to get it all

its essentially not worth the price when its not hard for the media industries to keep churning out much cheaper pap as they are currently doing

GW isn't just IP though, it's also a manufacturer.
Its not like Disney buying Lucasfilm and getting the IP it owned, then leasing that IP to companies such as Hasbro and EA.

This.

They buy it to get the IP, then sell the rest off

or more likely they create "just close enough to be recognisable but just different enough not to be actionable" derivatives

or just keep churning out the same "safe" garbage

Could GW take a similar approach to their videogames? Throw bits and pieces of their IP to variously sized companies to produce a media product. Even a few moderate successes like Mechanicum and Chaos Gate produced some pretty cool stuff. And if Space Marine 2 is a success that would could further vindicate using their IP this way. I would assume the same could apply to television.

Big budget tv series (basically any modern fantasy or sci-fi series) generally rely heavily on merch sales to finance them, as the only way to monetize them otherwise is through advertising or streaming rights, which often don't cover production costs

Pretty sure *any* movie or TV effort, post “A New Hope” relies on merchandising.

Because it’s a solid way to make Tres Much Mazola, Daughter.

If your screen media is a hit? You leverage it. Even if it’s a bit crap? You can always rely on sad, pointless, man bunned Hipsters not actually understanding what Irony is, buying your merch, but like, only ironically, because like, that’ll show the man. No not that man, that man is like, my Trust Fund manager. But like, that other man.

Sure, but point is that movies make a lot of money from box office, even before merch. TV series? Nope.

I was surprised that there were even talks going on with Amazon about a Warhammer show seeing as there would be no way for Amazon to monetise it beyond getting people to pay for Prime which I would wager most people who would watch the show already do.

What merch do amazon make of Wheel of Time?



As for buying Warhammer to get the IP, honestly considering what Hollywood big studios would do with the IP they don't need to buy it. They'd just need big stompy men in power suits shooting aliens. They don't need to spend billions to get that as an action flick and I'd seriously doubt most studios would want to do faithful 40K (heck the HW machine rarely does faithful)

Honestly all the people who say they want a good 40K adaption would probably hate it as it would inevitably have to deal with the fact that the humans are possibly the worst of the bad guys.

And everything that goes with it, otherwise it’s just the same that any studio could do with even half competent writing and design work.

If we do get a heresy adaption I am going laugh though.
But Amazon just needs people in their ecosystem, so they can throw money at a project if it gets people in.

 Overread wrote:
What merch do amazon make of Wheel of Time?

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/F7ruSm0a4AEKUHv?format=jpg&name=medium

But also, i's a streaming series, it makes money by driving subscriptions to the platform (and if it diesnt it gets canceled, hence why 90% of Netflix originals don't last).

 Overread wrote:
What merch do amazon make of Wheel of Time?...

I'm deeply disappointed they don't make the coat.