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leopard wrote:
only real question is will they hire enough English actors to be the bad guys?

Since everyone in 40k is a Bad Guy, that's a lot of Brits.
And how many parts can Andy Serkis play?

chaos0xomega wrote:
From a licensing standpoint, GW has only two universes: Warhammer 40,000 and Warhammer Fantasy.

They do also have their long-overlooked Dark Future universe, but there's no hope of seeing any more of that.

Dark Future will stay obsured by time, since it brings up the problems of using named historical characters (Elvis, etc) with it.
As a game, I loved it. As a setting, that's what holds it back.
Also, Mad Max has moved on from being the Road Warrior. I know DF was not purely based on that, but that's what most will associate it with.

I wish I'd read that book that had Elvis as a retired Special Forces Colonel.

I like this line from a Financial Times article.

But the jeopardy is great. What if a clumsy non-player director reflexively recasts the blood-drenched exploits of orcs and space marines as a high school romcom?

I mean, let's not talk about the misspelling of Orks for 40K and the lower case for Space Marines.

I'm expecting years of development hell. I've been waiting seven years for news of Duncan Jones and his Rogue Trooper project.

 alphaecho wrote:
I'm expecting years of development hell. I've been waiting seven years for news of Duncan Jones and his Rogue Trooper project.

Not to mention the Mega-City One anthology series that has been seemingly floating around forever. The Dredd movie was over a decade ago, now!

chaos0xomega wrote:
That's not really how licensing works.

I mean, it is if you are talking about "lines" in this context, but there are different "containers" that licenses can fall within (line, universe, franchise, brand, etc. These terms are not generally interchangeable and are subject to how a licensor defines them). Per one of the recent GW financial reports there was a section where they discussed having two "universes". The warhammer 40,000 universe was inclusive of horus heresy, the warhammer fantasy universe was Age of sigmar and said something about how it was "soon to be joined by" The Old World or something to that effect.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Because I always feel compelled to prove myself - this wasn't the piece I was thinking of, but it was the first one I found (in the most recent full year report :

"We have two main universes/settings - our dark, gritty fantasy sci-fi universe, which encompasses ‘Warhammer 40,000’, ‘Warhammer The Horus Heresy’ and ‘Necromunda’, and our unique fantasy setting that includes ‘Warhammer Age of Sigmar’, ‘Blood Bowl’ (albeit a tongue in cheek parody) and, the soon to be released, ‘Warhammer The Old World’. We believe our IP to be among the best in the world."

Two IP Universes is different to only having two licences within to parcel out to people.

GW very clearly segments those universes into different things. Factions, games, concepts, etc... One can get a licence for Bloodbowl to make a Bloodbowl related thing. That doesn't mean you get the "Old World" licence which comes with everything from OW and AoS.


Plus even within that Two Universe system the AoS and Old World IP are exceptionally different from each other. Even if they share some named characters and models; the actual settings are wildly different.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
GW always parcels out their IPs in discrete units. Its rare that someone just gets the license for "Warhammer" or "40k".

Many of them are much more specific, especially with all the shovelware games they've made over the years, where they were for one specific thing and nothing beyond the scope of that. There's no guarantee that getting the rights to 40k gives them the rights to The Horus Heresy. It's a different trademark.

But this isn't shovelware, is it? If their press release is stating "universes" then the licensing deal with Amazon is clearly much broader than their typical approach, assuming they are remaining consistent with their own internal IP nomenclature.

chaos0xomega wrote:
That's not really how licensing works.

I mean, it is if you are talking about "lines" in this context, but there are different "containers" that licenses can fall within (line, universe, franchise, brand, etc. These terms are not generally interchangeable and are subject to how a licensor defines them). Per one of the recent GW financial reports there was a section where they discussed having two "universes". The warhammer 40,000 universe was inclusive of horus heresy, the warhammer fantasy universe was Age of sigmar and said something about how it was "soon to be joined by" The Old World or something to that effect.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Because I always feel compelled to prove myself - this wasn't the piece I was thinking of, but it was the first one I found (in the most recent full year report :

"We have two main universes/settings - our dark, gritty fantasy sci-fi universe, which encompasses ‘Warhammer 40,000’, ‘Warhammer The Horus Heresy’ and ‘Necromunda’, and our unique fantasy setting that includes ‘Warhammer Age of Sigmar’, ‘Blood Bowl’ (albeit a tongue in cheek parody) and, the soon to be released, ‘Warhammer The Old World’. We believe our IP to be among the best in the world."

Having two settings - a sci-fi setting and a fantasy setting - doesn't also mean that the things within those settings all come under one thing when it comes to licensing and there's no separation between parts of it. They each have their own rights to be licensed out.

Like even just that quote you give there has "Warhammer 40,000", "Warhammer The Horus Heresy" and "Necromunda" as separate things that are encompassed within the sci-fi setting, yet you're claiming that just giving the "Warhammer 40,000" part of it gets them all the other stuff too - that's not what it says at all.

 Overread wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:
That's not really how licensing works.

I mean, it is if you are talking about "lines" in this context, but there are different "containers" that licenses can fall within (line, universe, franchise, brand, etc. These terms are not generally interchangeable and are subject to how a licensor defines them). Per one of the recent GW financial reports there was a section where they discussed having two "universes". The warhammer 40,000 universe was inclusive of horus heresy, the warhammer fantasy universe was Age of sigmar and said something about how it was "soon to be joined by" The Old World or something to that effect.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Because I always feel compelled to prove myself - this wasn't the piece I was thinking of, but it was the first one I found (in the most recent full year report :

"We have two main universes/settings - our dark, gritty fantasy sci-fi universe, which encompasses ‘Warhammer 40,000’, ‘Warhammer The Horus Heresy’ and ‘Necromunda’, and our unique fantasy setting that includes ‘Warhammer Age of Sigmar’, ‘Blood Bowl’ (albeit a tongue in cheek parody) and, the soon to be released, ‘Warhammer The Old World’. We believe our IP to be among the best in the world."

Two IP Universes is different to only having two licences within to parcel out to people.

GW very clearly segments those universes into different things. Factions, games, concepts, etc... One can get a licence for Bloodbowl to make a Bloodbowl related thing. That doesn't mean you get the "Old World" licence which comes with everything from OW and AoS.


Plus even within that Two Universe system the AoS and Old World IP are exceptionally different from each other. Even if they share some named characters and models; the actual settings are wildly different.

All well and good, but just because GW typically segments and licenses individual lines, doesn't mean it cannot bundle and license an entire universe. These are not mutually exclusive events.

 Lord Damocles wrote:
I'm glad that Amazon haven't produced any major adaptations which have absolutely bombed recently...

Honestly, it's harder to feth up 40k than lord of the rings. Warhammer is mostly vibes, and the vibes aren't even consistent. You can have explicitly black and white heroic bolter porn (despite the, uh, problems with presenting space marines and the imperium as purely good heroes) or dark gritty explorations of the awful human condition of the setting. Like you get the whole spectrum in current media offerings already.

LotR is based of a singular author's work, and Tolkein had a clear vision. When you deviate from that, it is immediately clear and makes a mess. Also tolkein hated crass allegory (even when he, despite his words, used it. He at least was a lot more deft then "ELF LOVER!")

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:

 Lord Damocles wrote:
I'm glad that Amazon haven't produced any major adaptations which have absolutely bombed recently...

Not necessarily an unfair observation, but a somewhat myopic one. American Gods, Invincible, The Boys, Jack Reacher, Good Omens all stand testament that just as Rings of Power can prove Amazon can get it a bit wrong*, they can also get it pretty much spot on.

*I enjoyed it well enough. Regardless of what it may or may not have done to the source material, it was still a well made bit of Fantasy silliness.

American gods went off a cliff over casting chaos and creative differences after, like, season 2

 Scottywan82 wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
Well... this can really only go one of two ways. And one of those ways is "Rings of Power".

As always: Be careful what you wish for.

Ironically, I would consider that a best case scenario. It could go like Wheel of Time.

A good show then?

I mean WoT the show isn't perfect, they really need to stop undercutting Rand, but all in all the show is an enjoyable watch for most people.

 BrookM wrote:

 Gimgamgoo wrote:
Interesting. I read an article on one of the financial sites the other day saying it had all fallen through.
Looking forward to it, but it's so far in the future, I'll try and forget about it for a while.

I saw something similar pass me by on twitter about how the GW exec in charge fluffed up the fine print of the contracts with Amazon, but it was a dodgy source, so it looks like that wasn't true after all.

I mean, even if they did Amazon isn't gonna go "HAHA! GOTCHYA!" with GW. A good working relationship matters and contracts can be amended over errors.

 Mentlegen324 wrote:
Reading this article again, do they only have the rights to 40k? Considering they don't have a specific plan I thought there was at least a potential of WHFB/AoS/Horus Heresy etc but it specifically says 40k and nothing else.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 Mentlegen324 wrote:
... as there seems to be a large portion of fans these days who seem to think you're meant to root for the Imperium and who make out that they're the the best thing for humanity in the setting.

And just as many people who think there are no good guys in 40k, which is just as false.

Just who are you considering as that?

HB's one of the people in your first post.

Oh yeah, the thing about the fethed up contract that was signed by a single executive without reading it is almost certainly 100% horsegak.

Amongst publicly traded companies it's typical for agreements of significant commercial magnitude (as this deal arguably would be), as well as those involving distribution or licensure of corporate assets or IP, or which enter the company into agreements of material importance to the company (IP license deals, partnerships, etc) to require review and approval by the boards of directors of both companies befire entering into effect. One person can't just impulsively sign away a companies IP, the world doesn't work that way.

Not to mention specialist lawyers and solicitors and all that good expensive stuffs.

I mean the reason it was so obviously bollocks was simply that even if you believe GW are that inept, the odds that both Cavill's production company and Amazon Studios would accept a term sheet sent to them that didn't come from the company's council with a lawyer countersigning it to ensure that the requisite signing authority is in place is zero.

Amazon Studios legal term are all former big studio people, they're not going to take a term sheet written by some idiot exec.

 Shakalooloo wrote:

 alphaecho wrote:
I'm expecting years of development hell. I've been waiting seven years for news of Duncan Jones and his Rogue Trooper project.

Not to mention the Mega-City One anthology series that has been seemingly floating around forever. The Dredd movie was over a decade ago, now!

Strontium Dog was optioned even further back

stratigo wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 Mentlegen324 wrote:
... as there seems to be a large portion of fans these days who seem to think you're meant to root for the Imperium and who make out that they're the the best thing for humanity in the setting.

And just as many people who think there are no good guys in 40k, which is just as false.

Just who are you considering as that?

HB's one of the people in your first post.

There are people that think Walter White is the protagonist. There are even weirder people who look up to Homelander.

Doesn’t matter how you present them, someone intent on misinterpreting is gonna misinterpret. Not to mention those who really don’t get they’re baddies, and not to be held up.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
There are people that think Walter White is the protagonist. There are even weirder people who look up to Homelander.

Doesn’t matter how you present them, someone intent on misinterpreting is gonna misinterpret. Not to mention those who really don’t get they’re baddies, and not to be held up.

Isn't Walter White the protagonist though? There is a difference between protagonist and hero. Same with antagonist and villain. In most stories they are one and the same but not always.

Protagonist = The main character we follow. Antagonist = a character opposing the antagonist.

Yep, every protagonist is someone elses antagonist. The terms are not mutually exclusive nor based in moral stance.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 The Phazer wrote:
I mean the reason it was so obviously bollocks was simply that even if you believe GW are that inept, the odds that both Cavill's production company and Amazon Studios would accept a term sheet sent to them that didn't come from the company's council with a lawyer countersigning it to ensure that the requisite signing authority is in place is zero.

Amazon Studios legal term are all former big studio people, they're not going to take a term sheet written by some idiot exec.

I didn't follow the rumor closely enough, is whats being claimed that someone at GW tried writing up their own contract and pushing it through without oversight? Thats even more ridiculous than I thought - my understanding was that Amazon sent GW a contract and said unnamed exec signed it without any review or discussion.

chaos0xomega wrote:
I didn't follow the rumor closely enough, is whats being claimed that someone at GW tried writing up their own contract and pushing it through without oversight?

More or less:

Christ, they really need to stop hiring people based on how well they write a letter bigging up how much they love GW...

 Shakalooloo wrote:

 alphaecho wrote:
I'm expecting years of development hell. I've been waiting seven years for news of Duncan Jones and his Rogue Trooper project.

Not to mention the Mega-City One anthology series that has been seemingly floating around forever. The Dredd movie was over a decade ago, now!

We'll sadly never see that show at this point. We're more likely see both the two fan films with existing trailers finally completed and released before seeing a further Dredd film.

beast_gts wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:
I didn't follow the rumor closely enough, is whats being claimed that someone at GW tried writing up their own contract and pushing it through without oversight?

More or less:

Spoiler:

I know plenty seem to have a pretty low opinion of GW and they've made many mistakes in the past, but not really anything that was that incompetent. It's such an absurd thing that it seems pretty clearly fake right away. The idea that 1 guy who has no idea what he's doing and shouldn't be the one making these decisions would be able to go outside the proper way of doing things to just rush into a terrible contract he's done by himself and then lying about it, all so he can take credit but ending up signing away their rights to their own IP to such an extent they'd basically need a license from Amazon to make something is just utter nonsense.

 Mentlegen324 wrote:
It's such an absurd thing that it seems pretty clearly fake right away.

Yep. My guess is someone heard GW were about to make an official statement and decided to chuck out some clickbait.

 Mentlegen324 wrote:

beast_gts wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:
I didn't follow the rumor closely enough, is whats being claimed that someone at GW tried writing up their own contract and pushing it through without oversight?

More or less:

Spoiler:

I know plenty seem to have a pretty low opinion of GW and they've made many mistakes in the past, but not really anything that was that incompetent. It's such an absurd thing that it seems pretty clearly fake right away. The idea that 1 guy who has no idea what he's doing and shouldn't be the one making these decisions would be able to go outside the proper way of doing things to just rush into a terrible contract he's done by himself and then lying about it, all so he can take credit but ending up signing away their rights to their own IP to such an extent they'd basically need a license from Amazon to make something is just utter nonsense.

Indeed. And after the Malal drama back in the day, IP licensing agreements is something they’re usually really hot on.

beast_gts wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:
I didn't follow the rumor closely enough, is whats being claimed that someone at GW tried writing up their own contract and pushing it through without oversight?

More or less:

Spoiler:

That doesn't say the GW exec drafted the agreement though, it reads as though Amazon did, sent it to GW, and the exec signed it without reading it, which is a different but equally ridiculous scenario.

Is it possible that a GW exec did sign the contract on his own without review? Yeah, sure... but that wouldn't be a legally enforceable or binding contract without going through the full corporate due diligence process. Its a complete nothingburger, as they say. Just about every corporate constitution/by-laws contains provisions in it that make contracts signed by their employees and membership without following certain process invalid unless accompanied by waivers issued by another defined process, etc. Basically the signatory doesn't have the legal authority to enter into a legal agreement on behalf of the company until certain criteria is met and no court would hold a corporation as bound by a contract if it was signed without those criteria being met (unless it was found that the corporation avoided meeting those obligations knowingly with an intent to deceive, etc.). The standard for corporate contracting is for both parties to include those terms as part of the rider/Ts&Cs sent with their signature so both parties can verify that those criteria are satisfied and have entered into force to make the contract binding between parties. If these processes and requirements didn't exist then in theory even the lowliest doorman or janitor would be able to enter into legally binding agreements on behalf of a corporation without any sort of oversight or control over the process.

chaos0xomega wrote:
From a licensing standpoint, GW has only two universes: Warhammer 40,000 and Warhammer Fantasy.

Horus Heresy and Warhammer 40,000 (and Necromunda and probably a bunch of others) are both *lines* within the Warhammer 40,000 universe, Age of Sigmar and The Old World/Warhammer Fantasy are both *lines* within the Warhammer Fantasy universe. Amazon basically has rights to everything GW.

Warhammer Fantasy is separate to AOS, GW are always very careful with naming those and they never call AOS 'Warhammer Fantasy' or any variant thereof. There's a reason why in the video game world CA can't use anything solely AOS for Total War Warhammer and Frontier have no rights to anything Fantasy. They're separate IPs from a licencing perspective and have always been so.

 Mentlegen324 wrote:

beast_gts wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:
I didn't follow the rumor closely enough, is whats being claimed that someone at GW tried writing up their own contract and pushing it through without oversight?

More or less:

Spoiler:

I know plenty seem to have a pretty low opinion of GW and they've made many mistakes in the past, but not really anything that was that incompetent. It's such an absurd thing that it seems pretty clearly fake right away. The idea that 1 guy who has no idea what he's doing and shouldn't be the one making these decisions would be able to go outside the proper way of doing things to just rush into a terrible contract he's done by himself and then lying about it, all so he can take credit but ending up signing away their rights to their own IP to such an extent they'd basically need a license from Amazon to make something is just utter nonsense.

What stuns me is how widely accepted such works of absolute and obvious fiction are. I know the community comes from all walks of life, but I would expect that there are enough people out there who work corporate jobs that would look at it and go "guys, this isn't really how the real world works" to call it into question before it reached the level of critical mass that we are even discussing the possibility of it being real. You wouldn't even really need to be working at a high level corporate job to know this, like its something that anyone whos worked professionally for a big business for longer than maybe 2-3 years would probably have enough of an inkling about to know that it was a load of bull.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Londinium wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:
From a licensing standpoint, GW has only two universes: Warhammer 40,000 and Warhammer Fantasy.

Horus Heresy and Warhammer 40,000 (and Necromunda and probably a bunch of others) are both *lines* within the Warhammer 40,000 universe, Age of Sigmar and The Old World/Warhammer Fantasy are both *lines* within the Warhammer Fantasy universe. Amazon basically has rights to everything GW.

Warhammer Fantasy is separate to AOS, GW are always very careful with naming those and they never call AOS 'Warhammer Fantasy' or any variant thereof.

And yet they define their Warhammer IP as occupying only two "universes", one sci-fi, and one fantasy - with the fantasy universe including Age of Sigmar, Blood Bowl, The Old World, etc. Thats straight from their financial report. So clearly, they are not as separate as you believe it to be.

chaos0xomega wrote:

Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Londinium wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:
From a licensing standpoint, GW has only two universes: Warhammer 40,000 and Warhammer Fantasy.

Horus Heresy and Warhammer 40,000 (and Necromunda and probably a bunch of others) are both *lines* within the Warhammer 40,000 universe, Age of Sigmar and The Old World/Warhammer Fantasy are both *lines* within the Warhammer Fantasy universe. Amazon basically has rights to everything GW.

Warhammer Fantasy is separate to AOS, GW are always very careful with naming those and they never call AOS 'Warhammer Fantasy' or any variant thereof.

And yet they define their Warhammer IP as occupying only two "universes", one sci-fi, and one fantasy - with the fantasy universe including Age of Sigmar, Blood Bowl, The Old World, etc. Thats straight from their financial report. So clearly, they are not as separate as you believe it to be.

Yeah from a strictly in-universe and non legal perspective, AOS and WHFB do inhabit the same universe. There's a difference between that casual/in-universe explanation and the way that GW legally licences it's properties. No company since AOS became a thing has received a 'Fantasy' licence from GW, making them capable of producing things in both settings.

Thing is the financial report isn not a "in-universe perspective" and is in fact a legal document.

chaos0xomega wrote:
Thing is the financial report isn not a "in-universe perspective" and is in fact a legal document.

That document does not list there being a single license called "Warhammer 40,000" that consists of 40k, the Horus Heresy, Necromunda etc rights bundled together as you're making out.